War, the military and militarization around the globe: WAR, THE MILITARY AND MILITARIZATION AROUND THE GLOBE (original) (raw)
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Making war at home in the United States: Militarization and the current crisis
2002
ABSTRACT Our job as intellectuals, this article argues, is to struggle to understand the crisis presented by terrorism in all its forms. This can center on a theoretical account of militarization and its relationship to broader social changes, from the emergence of nationstates to the course of racialization and other inequalities to the convergence of interests in military spending.
War Makes the State, but Not as It Pleases: Homeland Security and American Anti-Statism
Security Studies, 2006
The shock of war is thought to be closely associated with the growth of the state, in the United States and elsewhere. Yet each proposal to significantly expand state power in the United States since September 11 has been resisted, restrained, or even rejected outright. This outcome-theoretically unexpected and contrary to conventional wisdom-is the result of enduring aspects of America's domestic political structure: the separation of powers at the federal level between three co-equal and overlapping branches, the relative ease with which interest groups access the policy-making process, and the intensity with which executive-branch bureaucracies guard their organizational turf. These persistent aspects of U.S. political life, designed by the nation's founders to impede the concentration of state power, have substantially shaped the means by which contemporary guardians of the American state pursue "homeland security." War does make the state, but not as it pleases. Theoretical approaches to state building should recognize that domestic political institutions mediate between the international shock of war and domestic state building. Homeland Security and American Anti-Statism 227 to the detention of terrorist suspects, and from the organization of domestic intelligence to the surveillance of the U.S. citizenry. 4 This article will argue that this virtually uniform outcome is the result of enduring aspects of America's domestic political structure: the separation of power at the federal level between three co-equal and overlapping branches, the relative ease with which interest groups access the policy-making process, and the intensity with which executive-branch bureaucracies guard their organizational turf. Solely and in combination, these three persistent aspects of U.S. political life, designed by the nation's founders to impede the concentration of state power, have substantially shaped the contemporary state's pursuit of "homeland security." This argument will proceed in five sections. The first section will review the theoretical literature on the relationship between war and state building. The second will provide a method for measuring state power, finding that, contrary to conventional wisdom, state power has not significantly increased since the war on terrorism began. Next, a theoretical framework will be developed to explain the observed pattern of state building in post-September 11 America. Empirical support for this theory will come in three qualitative case studies: the detention of enemy combatants, cyber-security, and domestic intelligence. The concluding section will consider the implications of this argument for both theory and practice. We find that war makes the state, but not as it pleases. 5 Theoretical approaches to state building can usefully incorporate domestic political structure as an intervening variable that mediates between the shock of war and the growth of state power. In the policy realm, we argue that domestic political pressures may be leading the U.S. government to outsource the garrison state.
The Military-Industrial Complex
In 2022, the United States spent almost a trillion dollars ($876.94 billion) on war making. The effects of this war spending shape both domestic and international politics. As a cross-party consensus is built around the war machine, spending on social programs and public goods are diminished and cut. This social war on the lowest, racialized, classes within the United States, is related directly to the imperial war that the U.S. funds and enacts abroad. Military spending is a project undertaken in the name of defense, security, and Pax Americana, but it’s main raison d’etre is destruction and death. Since 9/11 the United States has spent $8 trillion on war, killing between 3.6 and 3.8 million people, and displacing 38 million refugees (Costs of War Project). How is war made? That is the primary question that this course tackles. It uses the phrase “military-industrial complex” – coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his famous farewell address as a launchpad for this investigation. While Eisenhower’s speech focused on the relationship between the U.S. army, the government, and defense industry, this course takes a broad approach to the question of the military-industrial complex. We will analyze the culture, social, political, and economic relations that sustain war making from the Gunbelt, labor, cultures of war, racism & capitalism, finance, knowledge production & the university, logistics, policy, imperial warfare, desire and weapons, and the “boomerang” effects of empire. We will focus especially on the way these social and political processes shape warmaking in New England.
Compared to other accumulation models, the capitalist accumulation model has always been more susceptible to social uprisings because of its structural class conflicts, monopolistic and expansionist characteristics and its tendency toward systematic crises. In this context, the regulatory instruments of national security, namely, police and military forces, have functioned as "preventive" regulatory instruments to suppress social uprisings in the resilient process of hegemony (i.e., historic bloc) and the accumulation model. This paper examines how the authorization of the military and police force in American domestic affairs have been justified in the name of national security since the outset of the structural crisis of capitalism.
In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s
The American Historical Review, 1997
We stand at the end of a violent century, much of it embroiled in some form of war. Living under this "shadow of war" resulted in the "militarization" of American society, according to historian Michael S. Sherry. Evidence of militarization-"the process by which war and national security became consuming anxieties and provided the memories, models, and metaphors that shaped broad areas of national life" (p. xi)-is compelling. This rather disturbing synthesis argues that a political culture, shaped by civilian elites, elevated defense requirements to the highest priority. Affluence and a phobia toward military power, however, deterred regimentation and a warrior spirit. War's influence was omnipresent but also "quixotic" (p. 500) and confronted uncomfortably by Americans. Yet security-driven ways of addressing problems abroad influenced the imagination, transferring militarization into the domestic arena.
Militarism Unchecked: Origins and Consequences
Geopolitics, 2008
The years since the president of the United States declared a global "war on terrorism" have been punctuated with calls from a number of political geographers and geopolitical scholars, such as Colin Flint, Rachel Woodward, Derek Gregory, Stephen Graham, and Matt Sparke, for more engagement with the issues of war, peace, and militarism. This point was clearly demonstrated at the 2007 Association of American Geographers conference, which featured sessions with titles such as "Militarization and the Family" and "Geographies of Militarism". The theme of militarism has emerged in other fields as well. For instance, political scientist Chalmers Johnson examined this topic in tandem with the related themes of American imperialism and hegemony in his 2004 book, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. Anthropologist Catherine Lutz (2001) documents the processes of militarisation in her recent work, Homefront: A Military