The perils of colonial war in the 21st century

[Idris2002]

It's interesting that the First Command of the Capital gang have adopted a name that seems to mimic the sort of names organs of the state possess.

There would have to be very serious economic crisis in the US and wider world for US society to come to resemble that of Brazil though.

A war with China might well trigger that sort of economic crisis. . .

 

[Idris2002]

Sure, but the general tendency seems to be on the increase globally.

So there is no particular reason to think that we're somehow magically immune to it here or in the US.

Is it on the increase, though?

And the case of Northern Ireland shows that the UK at least, is not immune - but also that the sickness passes in the end. E2A: on further reflection, that second part of that last sentence is really pretty stupid.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well, subjectively, it seems to me to be on the increase and Van Creveld, who has a professional interest in these things, seems pretty convinced that it is.

Certainly the sort of stuff he indicates as drivers for it seem to be undeniably on the increase. Governments less and less responsive to the needs of the people, growing disparity between rich and poor (Brazil has a truly rotten GINI index), dismantling of welfare states and other safety nets and so on.

What he seems to be arguing is that this stuff is a corollary of what's usually called globalisation.

 

[Idris2002]

I went back and scanned that Creveld article you posted, and I'll give it a longer look later (maybe).

But I wasn't surprised, or impressed, that he quotes on Africa the writer Robert D. Kaplan - who is a fucking ignorant twat.

I don't have the time to give this the full attention it requires, but take it from me that conflict (and in most of the continent, the absence of conflict) in Africa is much more complex than he (Kaplan) imagines.

In some parts of Africa we do see the 'wandering away of the state' which breeds violent conflict (e.g. in 1990s Sierra Leone) but in other cases, violent conflict breeds stronger state forces - e.g. post-liberation Eritrea or post-genocide Rwanda.

This isn't a good thing, far from it in fact - but it's not consistent with a picture of a world where the retreat of the state leads to barbarism and violence. Much of the barbarism and violence we experience in today's world is, and will remain, the work of states.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I went back and scanned that Creveld article you posted, and I'll give it a longer look later (maybe).

But I wasn't surprised, or impressed, that he quotes on Africa the writer Robert D. Kaplan - who is a fucking ignorant twat.

I don't have the time to give this the full attention it requires, but take it from me that conflict (and in most of the continent, the absence of conflict) in Africa is much more complex than he (Kaplan) imagines. <snip>

Interesting to get an informed opinion on that.

As you what you say in the bit I've snipped, I've no argument with the contention that states are still overwhelmingly the major source of violence, but you could say the same thing about Iraq, despite the fact that a good deal of the violence now taking place there is being carried out by non-state actors of various kinds using readily reproducible techniques.

 

[Aldebaran]

I've no argument with the contention that states are still overwhelmingly the major source of violence, but you could say the same thing about Iraq, despite the fact that a good deal of the violence now taking place there is being carried out by non-state actors of various kinds using readily reproducible techniques.

It is the total disruption of the State apparatus (including getting borders that are completely unguarded) that made the current waves of violence possible.
As long as a state has a fully staffed and fully operating civil servant and army structure, violence of such a scale is hardly possible. Unless when staging a sudden and total revolution in wich they cooperate (or at least partially).

salaam.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I did a quick google and figured out who Kaplan is. I've seen a bit of his stuff before and I'm pretty sure that I can see why you don't like it. He seems to me oddly blind to the role that global capitalism plays in all of these conflicts and hence falls back on some other tendencies in trying to interpret this stuff.

Here's a question for you then Idris.

I found these 4th gen war guys via Oi's posts, when he was still around. As far as I know they're the nearest thing that say the US military has to an attempt to understand this sort of conflct. For that reason alone I find them quite interesting, but they are distinctly blind in certain areas. Do you have some alternate thinking about these matters that you could perhaps suggest?

 

[Idris2002]

Hmmm. Off the top of my head I'd try and look at it from the point of view of a globalisation process that rather than leading to a transcending of the national level, produces rather a vastly more complex web of linkages and flows between states and sub-state and non-state actors.

Within this 'runaway world' new 'niches of violence' (i.e. analogous to ecological niches) appear which drive an evolution towards novel forms of organising violence and warfare. But these niches are by definition not universal but rooted in local conditions where pre-existing cultures and social forms interact with globalisation processes in idiosyncratic ways.

I'll try and think of anything which deals with these topics, and get back to y0you.

 

[phildwyer]

Hmmm. Off the top of my head I'd try and look at it from the point of view of a globalisation process that rather than leading to a transcending of the national level, produces rather a vastly more complex web of linkages and flows between states and sub-state and non-state actors.

You've been reading Hardt and Negri aintcha? I don't think there's much new in these "linkages and flows." Nation states have been engaging with "sub-state and non-state actors" since their foundation.

 

[likesfish]

any sort of pissed off squaadie revolt is very likely to burn itself self out or if there gang maembers be used to settle scores.
although this is the sort of fantasy of milita types who noticebly hav'nt volunteered for the national guard and are unlikley to make any friend with returning vetrans

 

[Idris2002]

You've been reading Hardt and Negri aintcha? I don't think there's much new in these "linkages and flows." Nation states have been engaging with "sub-state and non-state actors" since their foundation.

Only know H and N at second hand, I have to admit. From what I've read about them, they've become overenthusiastic about their model, to the point of ignoring the persistence of nation-states as centres of power, especially in the imperial mode.

As you say, a lot of this stuff has strong historical precedents - but I'd argue there's a lot of difference between the ways in which nation-states, transnational oil companies and local communities engage with each other in the Niger delta, and the ways in which roughly equivalent players engaged with each other back in the days of the Atlantic slave trade.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

There are some different conditions which seem likely to be relevant too.

For example pervasive media and communications, global mobility of capital and all that stuff.

There's also the strong evidence that in places like Iraq and Lebanon, those on the wrong end of 'overwhelming' Western military power have figured out how, if not to inflict military defeat on it, at least render that military power far less effective and its use prohibitively costly in political terms, albeit at a huge human cost.

Lind can see that, and he's evidently quite scared that those on the wrong end of the civilianised version of that power within the US, will start adopting the same methods. You could argue that McVeigh was an early example of that, given that his declared motives were if I recall correctly, a reaction to events like Ruby Ridge and Waco.

 

[phildwyer]

Only know H and N at second hand, I have to admit. From what I've read about them, they've become overenthusiastic about their model, to the point of ignoring the persistence of nation-states as centres of power, especially in the imperial mode.

As you say, a lot of this stuff has strong historical precedents - but I'd argue there's a lot of difference between the ways in which nation-states, transnational oil companies and local communities engage with each other in the Niger delta, and the ways in which roughly equivalent players engaged with each other back in the days of the Atlantic slave trade.

I don't know, globalization seems pretty much like old-fashioned imperialism to me. Halliburton as the East India Company. Only this time the pretence that the colonized have anything to gain from the arrangement has largely been dropped.

My problem with Hardt and Negri is that they relegate capital to one among many forms of "biopower," they don't acknowledge its determining role. The legacy of neo-Foucauldian identity politics I'll wager.

 

[Idris2002]

There are some different conditions which seem likely to be relevant too.

For example pervasive media and communications, global mobility of capital and all that stuff.

There's also the strong evidence that in places like Iraq and Lebanon, those on the wrong end of 'overwhelming' Western military power have figured out how, if not to inflict military defeat on it, at least render that military power far less effective and its use prohibitively costly in political terms, albeit at a huge human cost.

Lind can see that, and he's evidently quite scared that those on the wrong end of the civilianised version of that power within the US, will start adopting the same methods. You could argue that McVeigh was an early example of that, given that his declared motives were if I recall correctly, a reaction to events like Ruby Ridge and Waco.

The lower ranks of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone appear to have emerged out of a criminalised and semi-criminalised street youth subculture in the capital, a subculture that had access to hollywood action movies and gangster rap via those modern media networks you mention.

But the real roots of the civil war in SL lie in the context of a massively corrupt and underdeveloped west African society, one moreover, which was characterised by a peculiar social split between the indigenous peoples of the interior and the descendants of freed slaves settled there in the 19th century.

E2A: Hezbollah's victory in the summer was significant, but they did have help from Iran (and Syria?), something the Bloods or the Crips, or the Michigan Militia are unlikely to have. This has the makings of a good thread, btw, thanks.

*Maybe* everything will go truly shit-shaped in a post-Iraq US. But I still don't think it's likely.

 

[phildwyer]

The lower ranks of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone appear to have emerged out of a criminalised and semi-criminalised street youth subculture in the capital, a subculture that had access to hollywood action movies and gangster rap via those modern media networks you mention.

And you could also point to the interface between Jamaican criminal possees and the party militias.

 

[Idris2002]

I don't know, globalization seems pretty much like old-fashioned imperialism to me. Halliburton as the East India Company. Only this time the pretence that the colonized have anything to gain from the arrangement has largely been dropped.

My problem with Hardt and Negri is that they relegate capital to one among many forms of "biopower," they don't acknowledge its determining role. The legacy of neo-Foucauldian identity politics I'll wager.

I think biopolitics is a useful concept (I'm actually working on an edited volume relying on it, so it had better be!) but as you say it does have dodgy links to that kind of post-modernism.

I think a fundamental difference between classical imperialism and today's globalisation is that in the old days the colonial regimes would attempt to secure and pacify entire territories, whereas today we are seeing, in at least some cases, a 'cherry-picking' of this or that resource rich territory inside states, with the rest of the country being abandoned to its fate.

There's also the privatisation of violence, with the re-emergence of mercenaries in Africa, now in new forms. E.g. the S.African firm of mercs Executive Outcomes is reportedly part of a consortium that has extensive mineral interests.

 

[Idris2002]

And you could also point to the interface between Jamaican criminal possees and the party militias.

That's one of the things that I've always wanted to know more about. How did the intersection between politics and criminal gangs in Jamaica come about?

 

[phildwyer]

That's one of the things that I've always wanted to know more about. How did the intersection between politics and criminal gangs in Jamaica come about?

Check out this seriously excellent book. Banned in Jamaica for revealing Seaga's underworld involvement.

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Fi-Dead-Jamaican-Underworld/dp/0805046984

"From Publishers Weekly
Nothing encapsulates the sad story of 20th-century Jamaica better than the name the island's poor give themselves?"sufferers." Their suffering is the result of political battles between left and right, the latter supported by the U.S. The posses?street gangs made up of very poor people brought up on American westerns, kung fu and Stallone and Schwarzenegger movies?were converted into political strong-arm groups; the warfare reached its high point in the election of 1980, with about 800 political killings. Many posse members then emigrated to the U.S., where they channeled their violence into the crack trade. Gunst, who taught at the University of the West Indies in Kingston and wrote her doctoral dissertation on Jamaica, explores the line between the underworlds of New York and Kingston and shows just how ill-fated the island has become. The title is island patois for "born but to die.""

 

[London_Calling]

I don't know, globalization seems pretty much like old-fashioned imperialism to me. Halliburton as the East India Company. Only this time the pretence that the colonized have anything to gain from the arrangement has largely been dropped.

Halliburton is a parasite, typically acting in conjunction with the US Government in the aftermath of disaster, man-made or natural. It's function is limited, it's scope is limited.

Halliburton is not Microsoft, or Exxon, or Nike.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> I think a fundamental difference between classical imperialism and today's globalisation is that in the old days the colonial regimes would attempt to secure and pacify entire territories, whereas today we are seeing, in at least some cases, a 'cherry-picking' of this or that resource rich territory inside states, with the rest of the country being abandoned to its fate.

There's also the privatisation of violence, with the re-emergence of mercenaries in Africa, now in new forms. E.g. the S.African firm of mercs Executive Outcomes is reportedly part of a consortium that has extensive mineral interests.

With regard to your earlier post, I was seeing mass communication as a net vulnerability for the colonial power, despite attempts to use it (usually clumsily) for propaganda purposes. It's IMO a vulnerability in two ways. First it empowers resistance, for example in Iraq, I understand it's very common for a wave of mobile-phone communications to go out within minutes of say US soldiers forcing a busload of teenage girls to unveil during a sweep, and hence to kick off riots etc in reaction. Second, it means that despite intensive efforts at media control, most of the world, knows in broad terms what's happening in Iraq or Lebanon, even in the US the basic picture eventually starts to filter through the wall of propaganda, which is how that type of resistance wears down the political will of the colonial power.

With regard to the post I'm replying to, I think your "cherry-picking" point is interesting. In a way that's classic modern capitalist behaviour, going for the maximum profit and trying to dump its costs onto a state that's increasingly less and less able, if indeed it ever was, to deal with them.

That's precisely the behaviour people like Van Creveld are suggesting causes the people to transfer their loyalty to whatever it is that takes the place of the state in dealing with those costs.

Iraq seems to me to be a vivid example of this. The US and UK showed up, destroyed the ability of the Iraqi state to resist their occupation, and focussed on protecting the assets they were interested in, effectively leaving the rest of the place to fall apart around them. Cherry picking has consequences though, because in place of the state they've now got a sort of enormous gang war, which increasingly inflicts costs on them (pipeline destruction, Democrat electoral success) as well as on the Iraq people.

 

[slaar]

Great thread.

As far as Sierra Leone is concerned, Steve Keen has pretty soundly demolished the "rebel movements as greed-based" argument . The process by which a long period of corruption, economic collapse and disrespect / neglect exploded is a remarkable one.

The RUF foot-soldiers as Freetown-based I certainly don't buy though, although the youth out in the regions where the war ignited certainly had the same access to global media. Had a bizarre experience last week in Kailahun where the war started watching UEFA football with about 300 young people; inside a big shack in the poorest part of the country there were five big TV screens, each showing a different game, live.

As you say, a lot of this stuff has strong historical precedents - but I'd argue there's a lot of difference between the ways in which nation-states, transnational oil companies and local communities engage with each other in the Niger delta, and the ways in which roughly equivalent players engaged with each other back in the days of the Atlantic slave trade.

I definitely agree with your argument about firms increasingly cherry-picking areas of poor, resource-rich countries. But you could argue that the primary difference in how actors approach each other is based on the existence of AK-47s and cheap explosives.

I don't see a similar situation emerging in the most advanced countries but for a serious economic collapse. Then all bets are off. I highly dislike Kaplan, his writing is far too simplistic and stereotyped for what are staggeringly complex processes which as Idris says change in context constantly, and possibly get more complex (for a great refutation, Rosalind Shaw (Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination) on links and local reactions to globalisation are wonderful.

In advanced countries people have too much to lose.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> In advanced countries people have too much to lose.

Not all of them, which is why a racist right-winger like Lind is shitting himself at the thought of Iraqi insurgent tactics being adopted in the US's inner cities.

When a government simply treats the worst off citizens as a security problem for the better off citizens, I think that this stuff becomes potentially applicable.

So evidently, does Lind, which is why he's worried about it. I don't think it necessarily requires economic collapse, just a really horrible GINI index. (cf Brazil)

 

[slaar]

Not all of them, which is why a racist right-winger like Lind is shitting himself at the thought of Iraqi insurgent tactics being adopted in the US's inner cities.

I mean systemically, Bernie. If you read Juan Cole on Iraq, it's clear that a significant majority of the population need to at least tacitly support such action, more so as their own lives are directly threatened by competing factions, for it to spiral out of control.

The whole Kaplan thesis is that what is happening in some developing countries now is some kind of "new barbarism" that will slowly spill over to the rest of the world. Paul Richards showed this wasn't true for Sierra Leone, dynamiting one of his major case studies.

I just don't buy it.

 

[laptop]

Not all of them, which is why a racist right-winger like Lind is shitting himself at the thought of Iraqi insurgent tactics being adopted in the US's inner cities.

Ahhh!

I'm drunk. But nag me to come back to this thread.

On 9 Septemner 2001 my predominant thought was "...and this is the beginning of the end of the American Empire". Sure, the Administration was going to lash out at whoever it could lash out at... things were going to get bloody... but it was, like, sooo over.

I couldn't stand it up at the time.

But this thread is, I reckon, an example of why my instict was right.

I mourn already for the clerks and Starbucks waitpersons who will die in Cincinatti or Columbus... but there will be attentats, and the USA is over.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Slaar, but the problem with people like Kaplan is that they can't admit the role of global capitalism in causing these situations, so they have to fudge and stereotype to work around that.

I don't necessarily disagree that the the relevant postive feedback loops in Iraq have spread much further out of control than any analogous process you could imagine occuring in the US as it currently stands, but it's pretty clear to me that people like Lind are shitting themselves because they see the potential for that sort of situation to occur within the minority populations that the US state has essentially abandoned as unprofitable and simply treats as a security risk (cf New Orleans)

That may well be guilt and paranoia getting ahead of reality, but it's interesting that someone like that should be worrying about this stuff.

 

[slaar]

Slaar, but the problem with people like Kaplan is that they can't admit the role of global capitalism in causing these situations, so they have to fudge and stereotype to work around that.

I don't necessarily disagree that the the postive feedback loop in Iraq has gotten much further out of control than any analogous process you could imagine occuring in the US as it currently stands, but it's pretty clear to me that people like Lind are shitting themselves because they see the potential for that sort of situation to occur within the minory populations that the US state has essentially abandoned as unprofitable and simply treats as a security risk (cf New Orleans)

True. We can all recognise that these processes are unfathomably complex though.

With luck, such arguments will form part of a process by which global capitalism can be reformed. I think the rise of protectionist sentiment in many parts of the world is one sign that such forces are there. But it may take a while.

 

[Idris2002]

To go back to Bernie's original post, here's a line from the link:

One of the things U.S. troops are learning in Iraq is how people with little training and few resources can fight a state.

Is it true to say that the Iraqi insurgency is composed of people with little training and few resources? Did Iraq have army conscription, for example? And didn't Saddam hand out a lot of AKs before the end?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

To go back to Bernie's original post, here's a line from the link:



Is it true to say that the Iraqi insurgency is composed of people with little training and few resources? Did Iraq have army conscription, for example? And didn't Saddam hand out a lot of AKs before the end?

As far as I understand, the most effective weapons of the insurgency are IEDs, RPGs, mortars and AKs of which there are a great many readily available in Iraq.

Those are pretty scant resources compared to those possessed by the US military, which I take to be Lind's point, although they seem to be using them pretty effectively nonetheless, but probably fairly heavy duty compared to those of the average inner city gang or bunch of white supremacists gun-nuts running around in the woods someplace in the US.

On the other hand, that's about the same level of hardware that the IRA had if I recall correctly and would certainly be readily available elsewhere in the Americas, so I wouldn't rule out it becoming available to such groups.

My impression is that there is at least some level of military experience within the insurgency, but that's mostly going to be conventional military experience where present. Beyond knowing how to operate an AK or RPG, something that is no doubt easily passed on at a basic level, I'm not too sure how relevant the sort of experience of the average former squaddie is to paramilitary warfare of the sort that they're conducting against the US.

The expertise of former Baathist intelligence officers, sappers and the like is going to be of more relevance to the groups which have people like that in their organisation, but I don't get the idea that's universally the case.

What seems to be happening instead is that basic techniques and tactics for using these limited resources are being passed around and evolved on a mass scale by a wide variety of groups ranging from those who do have either experienced Baathist officers or perhaps experienced foreign mujehadin leadership, to the Iraqi equivalent of teenage street hoodlums.

Here's a pile of info on the composition of the insurgency from the Project on Defence Alternatives.

http://www.comw.org/pda/0603insurgency.html

This readable first hand journalistic account seems fairly consistent with the more formal studies linked above.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1246771,00.html

 

[Idris2002]

Someone once told me that the Irish army (i.e. the army of the 26 counties, who hate the IRA) is organised so that in the event of foreign invasion it can break down into groups who'll carry out a guerilla campaign.

As for the level of weaponry, the one weapon the IRA wanted but never got was SAMs (Surface to Air Missiles), so they could down helicopters. Does the Iraqi insurgency have them?

The War Nerd is an ass, as you know, but I do remember him making the point that nothing learns faster than a wartime army.

 

[bruise]

The War Nerd

who?