Submitted by Antonio Lopez on Wed, 03/26/2008 - 13:06.
The authors argue that warfare has moved into the same kind of production mode of post-industrial economics. But in Iraq, I think the approach was still that of the industrial war machine. The war planners just assumed that they could conquer the country with the mighty US military with all its technological prowess, so ontologically awesome that the populous would be "shocked and awed" by overwhelming technoporn. That was certainly the case of the US media which seemed to relish in the nightly display of military toys in action (I made a video of edited TV footage from the first weeks of the invasion to make this point. You can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oATQOoXGnOc). As much as the military wants to be a postmodern attack force, it doesn't seem capable of responding to the situation on the ground, which goes to show that no matter how clever your thinking, you are still an occupying army and that dynamic doesn't seem resolvable with technology. You still need "citizen soldiers," people who consent (as opposed to being forced to serve through so-called "stop-loss") to the program of war. I imagine on the most fundamental level this project of over-extended military control cannot be maintained with unlimited supplies of crank and Prozac.
I do think that that soldiers as technological prosthesis seems to be the most important argument in the chapter: "According to the ideology of the RMA... war no longer needs masses of soldiers who are massacred in the trenches. The humans on the battlefield, in the air, and at sea have become prostheses of the machines or, better, internal elements of the complex mechanical and electronic apparatus" (44). Yes, and perhaps that is the problem in Iraq, because machines cannot not act as police or civil servants. War is not just about your killing machines, but about communications and human relations, no matter how much planners want to do their remote torture. The dream of a "bodyless" war may end up being just that. The authors point out that the ideology will be hard to maintain in light of such practices.
The problem with the US is that their opponent is a truly networked and distributed phenomena. Whereas the Empire exhibits these characteristics in terms of media, computer technology, and subjectivity, militarily it's still an oil-guzzling industrial monstrosity. So when the authors say all wars tend to be netwars, perhaps that is true for at least one side of the equation. They argue that it takes a network to fight a network, but can networks really fight each other? Again, it may be true that Empire is networked to a degree, but it is still an identifiable enemy, whereas its opponent is much harder to define or find for that matter.
I think the most interesting part of the chapter deals with suicide bombers: "The suicide bomber is the dark opposite, the gory doppelganger of the safe bodyless soldier. Just when the body seemed to have disappeared from the battlefield with the no-soldiers-lost policy of the high-technology military strategy, it comes back in all its gruesome, tragic reality" (45). Later they argue that the suicide bomber is the "ontological limit of biopower in its most tragic and resulting form" (54). Given Hanna Arandt's distinction that totalitarians don't need consent of the population, and fascists do, the suicide bomber is the totalitarian mirror if Empire.
The discussion of the mercenary armies also seems incredibly prescient given the problems of Backwater. Not only was 9/11 a "revolt of the mercenaries" (even if we accept the official version of events) because of the phenomena of "blowback" (the "karma" of conducting covert warfare when the weapons sold and individuals trained turn against their "masters"), but the Christian fundamentalism of Blackwater should be considered like playing with a loose cannon. When you give the Ollie North's of the world too much latitude, disasters are bound to happen.
I do think that that soldiers as technological prosthesis seems to be the most important argument in the chapter: "According to the ideology of the RMA... war no longer needs masses of soldiers who are massacred in the trenches. The humans on the battlefield, in the air, and at sea have become prostheses of the machines or, better, internal elements of the complex mechanical and electronic apparatus" (44). Yes, and perhaps that is the problem in Iraq, because machines cannot not act as police or civil servants. War is not just about your killing machines, but about communications and human relations, no matter how much planners want to do their remote torture. The dream of a "bodyless" war may end up being just that. The authors point out that the ideology will be hard to maintain in light of such practices.
The problem with the US is that their opponent is a truly networked and distributed phenomena. Whereas the Empire exhibits these characteristics in terms of media, computer technology, and subjectivity, militarily it's still an oil-guzzling industrial monstrosity. So when the authors say all wars tend to be netwars, perhaps that is true for at least one side of the equation. They argue that it takes a network to fight a network, but can networks really fight each other? Again, it may be true that Empire is networked to a degree, but it is still an identifiable enemy, whereas its opponent is much harder to define or find for that matter.
I think the most interesting part of the chapter deals with suicide bombers: "The suicide bomber is the dark opposite, the gory doppelganger of the safe bodyless soldier. Just when the body seemed to have disappeared from the battlefield with the no-soldiers-lost policy of the high-technology military strategy, it comes back in all its gruesome, tragic reality" (45). Later they argue that the suicide bomber is the "ontological limit of biopower in its most tragic and resulting form" (54). Given Hanna Arandt's distinction that totalitarians don't need consent of the population, and fascists do, the suicide bomber is the totalitarian mirror if Empire.
The discussion of the mercenary armies also seems incredibly prescient given the problems of Backwater. Not only was 9/11 a "revolt of the mercenaries" (even if we accept the official version of events) because of the phenomena of "blowback" (the "karma" of conducting covert warfare when the weapons sold and individuals trained turn against their "masters"), but the Christian fundamentalism of Blackwater should be considered like playing with a loose cannon. When you give the Ollie North's of the world too much latitude, disasters are bound to happen.
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I had a similar thought of
Great post
I read the same article you did about the changing strategy in Iraq, and it said something about shoring up the human networks with money on the ground and building personal relationships. The Pentagon is now using anthropologists in Afganastan, which has caused a bit of an ethical controversy in the field of anthropology. Anyhow, nice thoughts.
As for the reading group, I don't know if it is still happening. I emailed everyone who has particiapted and they assured me they are still in. My suggestion is that you write an intro for chapter three to get things going again. I'll create the link so you can put something up (if you want). Hopefully the others will see this and will jump back in. Thanks!
full-spectrum dominance
Hey Antonio, I actually never received any said e-mail, or at least I don't think I did, but hopefully this group was just waiting for me to post in order to get things going once more. A lot of good responses to the first chapter and I'm sure there will be some good discussion on the book as we get going. I've been busy with school but this is definitely a priority come summertime.
As Daniel noted in a few of his posts on chapter 1, there is a real potential to discover how to motivate the multitude through this gathering of minds in this discussion group here. While people are teaching this book and thinking about practical responses all over the place, some unique connections might be made with this gathering of people able to think outside the box that might not occur elsewhere, and as everyone knows once the solution is found it already will pop up everywhere else in the collective consciousness . We are just going to have to strive to find the solution to what the response from the Multitude in the face of Empire needs to look like and we're just going to have to put in the work until we do.
Getting back to the discussion, I wanted to spend some time on their notion of "full-spectrum dominance" as it appears in the chapter. Of course it relates to the new biopower at stake for Empire, but this "full-spectrum dominance" even seems to encompass more than biopower as it "combines military might with social, economic, political, pyschological, and ideological control" (53). They develop this notion more completely in the following paragraph by addressing "late capitalism" and its "production of the [docile] subject by power" ("the nightmares of such authors [those writing about this production of docile subjects] correspond to the dreams of the strategists of full-spectrum dominance") (53).
This full-spectrum dominance, it seems clear to Negri and Hardt, can simply never be possible since "every sovereign power is always two-sided" and must be divided the dominant and the dominated. While the system in place, no matter what benevolent leaders at hand, will always desire such a police state of full-spectrum dominance to ensure a peace that is truly war, the true question at hand for us realitysandwichers is to discover what the alternative, as it is desired by those who no longer wish to participate in such a state of full-spectrum dominance, might practically look like and how we can create this new brave world of embracing anarchy and chaos - an apparent war that might truly bring peace.
I think in searching for at least the latter half of this equation, the "how to change things", Negri and Hardt offer a glimpse at the end of this chapter with their recognition that "what we are heading toward, then, is a state of war in which network forces of imperial order face network enemies on all sides" (62). As I envision this network war through the descriptions given in the chapter and my own imagination, it seems that as this type of war progresses it will begin to become less and less clear as to which side is really "the empire" desiring "full-spectrum dominance" and which side is really the oppressed standing up for freedom. I can only envision such a type of war as ultimately allowing opportunities for those currently working against "Empire" to open the eyes of those working for "Empire" in the network fronts of these individual skirmishes. If we are to take this type of war to its end, a war of endless little networked groups each believing they are fighting for the "right" cause while truly fighting in a small and tight networked group rather than under the hierarchical head spouting directions to all, it can only become easier for these individual network groups to realize the "wrongness" of any type of war and the "wrongness" of any desire for dominance, be it full-spectrum or individual force of will.
All bridges can be rebuilt.
Full spectrum dominance
Something's I noticed in Multitude
A couple of thoughts, they
A couple of thoughts, they aren't advocating armed resistance but they aren't also propogating the myth of non-violence as the only means of achieving social change, which is reprocated by many liberals and others. The idea that the only tool we have is to engage in non-violent civil disobedience, or even more reformist exchanges. What they seem to be saying is that when there is a totalitarian attempt at domination there will be elements within society that choose to resist it.
As far as sympathy for suicide bombers, I think that one can be horrified by a practice and at the same time understanding of the motivation that brings it into being. I can't really say much more there.
Part of me wants to see the global empire collapse and burn, part of me realizes that there has to be better ways come forth in the now before that happens, and that perhaps we can evolve as a society beyond our self-destructive and ecocidical practices and stop the war and go forward together as a multitude. We are the multitude not just the thinkers that will motivate the multitude.
The Multitude
This is true. We are definitely the multitude and not just the thinkers that will motivate the multitude, but I believe what we really need to be focused on here (which is what I believe is the essential next step forward from Negri and Hardt's Multitude) is to conceive how an organization of the multitude may come about.
Who knows, maybe that's exactly what we're doing at sites such as realtysandwich... from Pinchbeck's talk at Burning Man last year this site does seem to be a perfect example of the organization needed... but even still I wonder what the next steps will logically need to be. It seems that a number of smaller communities will need to step up and strengthen themselves and then connect to each other without their being any single or larger head, just like the guerrilla descriptions in the book. What do these communities need to look like though? How does one start such a community, etc? How can we be sure communication is maintained among all these various communities?
It seems to me that once these communities begin to become organized recruiting members and strengthening numbers will be made much easier and through this the multitude may finally come to a state of peaceful power.
I don't know... thoughts?
All bridges can be rebuilt.
self-organize
Discussion of
Air Force follow-up