William Davis writes in The New York Times that we are witnessing an ominous phenomenon:
A good indication of liberalism’s declining health is the rising profile of the military in domestic politics.
As the clock ticks down on Britain’s Brexit negotiations and the prospect of “no deal” rises, the fallback of military security looms into view. Britain’s defense secretary, Gavin Williamson, has stated that an additional 3,500 troops will be on standby to help ensure supplies get into the country, and government officials reportedly have examined the option of martial law in the event of major civil unrest. It is hard not to detect a whiff of excitement about all of this in the reactions of hard-core Brexiteers and their supporters in the media.
A similar sickness is evident across the Atlantic. President Trump has declared a state of emergency, provoked by a supposed crisis at the Mexican border, and he has deployed American troops on home soil. Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain who exemplifies many of the most frightening trends about the new strongman leaders around the world, has been steadily putting military personnel in key government positions.
The rhetoric of warfare is everywhere:
War metaphors (“culture war,” “social justice warrior”) accumulate steadily, each implying a breakdown of common political ground. One way to understand the upheavals of the past decade, manifest in political populism and the surge in talk about “post-truth” and “fake news,” is as the penetration of warlike mobilization and propaganda into our democracies.
And, in war, knowledge takes on a different character than it does in peaceful times:
Warfare requires knowledge, of course, just not of the same variety that we are familiar with in times of peace. In civil society, the facts provided by economists, statisticians, reporters and academic scientists have a peace-building quality to the extent that they provide a common reality that can be agreed upon. The ideal of independent expertise, which cannot be swayed by money or power, has been crucial in allowing political opponents to nevertheless agree on certain basic features of reality. Facts remove questions of truth from the domain of politics.
The conditions that most lend themselves to military responses are those in which time is running out. Of course, many of the emergencies that we face today are fictions: the “emergency” at the Mexican border or, perhaps, the British government’s intentional exaggerations of the threat of a “no deal” Brexit to put pressure on Parliament. Framing an issue as an emergency where time is of the essence is a means of bypassing the much slower civilian world of deliberation and facts.
That's Donald Trump's argument for his wall. And this situation is made worse by rapid technological change:
Because of technological changes of the past 30 years or so, initially in our financial system but subsequently in our media, political decision makers are increasingly short on time, having to react instantly to a constant flow of data. (If there is one feature of the military mind-set that we can all occasionally relate to, it’s that we don’t have very much time.) Many of the anxieties surrounding “post-truth” and “fake news” are really symptoms of a public sphere that moves too quickly, with too great a volume of information, to the point where we either trust our instincts or latch on to others’. There’s a reason Twitter invites users to “follow” one another, a metaphor that implies that amid a deluge of data, truth is ultimately determined by leadership.
The culture of an over-accelerated public sphere, wrought largely by technologies that we don’t know how to slow, is partly responsible for making democracy feel more like combat. But what can we do about it? Liberalism is not set up for this kind of challenge. The liberal ideal of civility is one in which argument and research can move at their own pace and decisions are made after the evidence is in. The separation of war from peace that laid the ground for liberal democracy to develop was originally a legal achievement, whereas now it also requires defending sanctuaries of slowness in the news media, market and universities.
Add to all of this the threat of climate change, and it's easy to see why we're in such a conundrum. Something to think about on a quiet Sunday morning.
Image: Emerging Nurse Leader
6 comments:
In 2014 the leading German business paper, Handelsblatt, warned that, across the West, the citizenry is being "mentally mobilized" for war. The hiatus we enjoyed and failed to appreciate following the collapse of the Soviet Union was over.
"In view of the war events in the Crimean and eastern Ukraine, the heads of states and governments of the West suddenly have no more questions and all the answers. The US Congress is openly discussing arming Ukraine. The former security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recommends arming the citizens there for house-to-house and street combat. The German Chancellor, as it is her habit, is much less clear but no less ominous: “We are ready to take severe measures.“
"German journalism has switched from level-headed to agitated in a matter of weeks. The spectrum of opinions has been narrowed to the field of vision of a sniper scope."
That liberal democracies are being militarized isn't surprising. It's been foretold in the climate change studies undertaken by the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence going back several years. Climate change is considered a "force multiplier" that will sharply worsen other destabilizing forces that now beset many countries, not all of them Third World backwaters either.
I managed to get an online course on warfare in the 21st century presented by the war studies gurus at King's College London. It was an eye-opener to explore how "new war" - i.e. permawar, war without end, the long war - had ensnarled the West through America's adventures in the sandbox of the Middle East. Then Obama "pivoted" from the ME to Asia and the Pentagon, frustrated by its quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, eagerly switched its focus back to "peer on peer" warfare, superpower warfare harkening back to the old Westphalian model of sturm und drang.
America revels in its role as the world's policeman. I mean 12 fleet carrier battle groups, that's madness. It's no wonder the US hasn't achieved a meaningful victory since Panama and Grenada. It wants to be everywhere at once.
America's rivals, China in particular, have wisely focused on A2/AD - anti-access/area denial - warfare that concentrates its military power in its own backyard. That requires a considerably smaller and more effective arsenal and weaponry than what burdens American over reach. Don't confront your adversary's strengths. Fight to his weaknesses, exploit his vulnerabilities.
Long before Donald Trump was a political figure, Gwynne Dyer wrote of Pentagon plans to militarize their southern border, contemplating a massive wave of climate refugees fleeing Central America. The same climate impacts that will drive populations out of Central America will sow chaos across the American south. That could quickly become a major burden to Washington and various state capitals. They're not apt to be putting out the welcome mat for little brown people from the south.
Those who depict Trump as a Russian asset point to how he has undermined the TransAtlantic relationship including NATO. He's out to destabilize the EU. Eastern Europe is now viewed with suspicion by Western Europe. There's more than a hint of bellicosity coming out of the rightwing populists running Poland, Hungary and Italy as well as their counterparts vying for power in Germany, France, Holland and elsewhere. No one knows how that will turn out but uncertainty breeds suspicion and fear and that can easily lead to militarization.
I'm in the camp of those who think a major war will be inadvertent, one that parties that really don't want war will back into. That, after all, is how WWI erupted.
Precisely, Mound. As was the case in World War I, when competing powers are armed to the teeth, it doesn't take much to push them into the abyss.
"sanctuaries of slowness"
I like that one. But if we think that it's just others who may be caused to suffer by our haste, then who cares? I may reach a conclusion on this question in my next lifetime.
Liberal democracies are dedicated to the proposition that the best decisions arise out of dilebertion, John. And sometimes those decisions seem to take a lifetime.
Agreed - too much is being spent on military. Not even defence anymore. Military.
Budgets are being slashed for clean water and housing for First Nations, education, health care (and not pharmacare, thank you), public transit and so on.
How do we take it back?
How do we get back into the driver's seat?
LY
Two very important questions, LY. That's what elections are supposed to be about.
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