{"id":2360,"date":"2013-10-21T10:02:49","date_gmt":"2013-10-21T16:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=2360"},"modified":"2013-10-21T10:02:49","modified_gmt":"2013-10-21T16:02:49","slug":"the-business-of-america-is-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/the-business-of-america-is-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Business of America Is War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disaster Capitalism on the Battlefield and in the Boardroom<\/strong><\/h3>\n

by\u00a0William J. Astore<\/a>, Tom Dispatch
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a new normal in America: our government may shut down, but our wars continue.\u00a0 Congress may not be able to pass a budget, but the U.S. military can still launch commando raids in Libya and Somalia, the Afghan War can still be\u00a0prosecuted<\/a>, Italy can be\u00a0garrisoned<\/a>\u00a0by American troops (putting the \u201cempire\u201d back in Rome), Africa can be used as an\u00a0imperial playground<\/a>\u00a0(as in the late nineteenth century \u201cscramble for Africa<\/a>,\u201d but with the U.S. and China doing the scrambling this time around), and the military-industrial complex can still\u00a0dominate<\/a>\u00a0the world\u2019s arms trade.<\/p>\n

In the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, it\u2019s business as usual, if your definition of \u201cbusiness\u201d is the power and profits you get from constantly preparing for and prosecuting wars around the world.\u00a0 \u201cWar is a racket,\u201d General Smedley Butler\u00a0famously declared<\/a>\u00a0in 1935, and even now it\u2019s hard to disagree with a man who had two Congressional Medals of Honor to his credit and was intimately familiar with American imperialism.<\/p>\n

War Is Politics, Right?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Once upon a time, as a serving officer in the U.S. Air Force, I was taught that Carl von Clausewitz had defined war as a continuation of politics by other means.\u00a0 This definition is, in fact, a simplification of his classic and complex book,\u00a0On War<\/em>, written after his experiences fighting Napoleon in the early nineteenth century.<\/p>\n

The idea of war as a continuation of politics is both moderately interesting and dangerously misleading: interesting because it connects war to political processes and suggests that they should be fought for political goals; misleading because it suggests that war is essentially rational and so controllable.\u00a0 The fault here is not Clausewitz\u2019s, but the American military\u2019s formisreading<\/a>\u00a0and oversimplifying him.<\/p>\n

Perhaps another \u201cCarl\u201d might lend a hand when it comes to helping Americans understand what war is really all about.\u00a0 I\u2019m referring to Karl Marx, who admired Clausewitz, notably for his idea that combat is to war what a cash payment is to commerce.\u00a0 However seldom combat (or such payments) may happen, they are the culmination and so the ultimate arbiters of the process.<\/p>\n

War, in other words, is settled by killing, a bloody transaction that echoes the exploitative exchanges of capitalism.\u00a0 Marx found this idea to be both suggestive and pregnant with meaning. So should we all.<\/p>\n

Following Marx, Americans ought to think about war not just as an extreme exercise of politics, but also as a continuation of exploitative commerce by other means.\u00a0 Combat as commerce: there\u2019s more in that than simple alliteration.<\/p>\n

In the history of war, such commercial transactions took many forms, whether as territory conquered, spoils carted away, raw materials appropriated, or market share gained.\u00a0 Consider American wars.\u00a0 The War of 1812 is sometimes portrayed as a minor dust-up with Britain, involving the temporary occupation and burning of our capital, but it really was about crushing Indians on the frontier and grabbing their land.\u00a0 The Mexican-American War was another land grab, this time for the benefit of slaveholders.\u00a0 The Spanish-American War was a land grab for those seeking an American empire overseas, while World War I was for making the world \u201csafe for democracy\u201d — and for American business interests globally.<\/p>\n

\"fear2<\/a>Even World War II, a war necessary to stop Hitler and Imperial Japan, witnessed the emergence of the U.S. as the arsenal of democracy, the world\u2019s dominant power, and the new imperial stand-in for a bankrupt British Empire.<\/p>\n

Korea?\u00a0 Vietnam?\u00a0 Lots of profit for the military-industrial complex and plenty of power for the Pentagon establishment.\u00a0 Iraq, the Middle East, current adventures in Africa?\u00a0 Oil, markets, natural resources, global dominance.<\/p>\n

In societal calamities like war, there will always be winners and losers.\u00a0 But the clearest winners are often companies like Boeing and Dow Chemical, which provided B-52 bombers and Agent Orange, respectively, to the U.S. military in Vietnam.\u00a0 Such \u201carms merchants\u201d — an older, more honest term than today\u2019s \u201cdefense contractor\u201d — don\u2019t have to pursue the hard sell, not when war and preparations for it have become so permanently, inseparably intertwined with the American economy, foreign policy, and our nation\u2019s identity as a rugged land of \u201cwarriors\u201d and \u201cheroes\u201d (more on that in a moment).<\/p>\n

War as Disaster Capitalism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Consider one more definition of war: not as politics or even as commerce, but as societal catastrophe.\u00a0 Thinking this way, we can apply Naomi Klein’s concepts of the “shock doctrine<\/a>” and “disaster capitalism” to it.\u00a0 When such disasters occur, there are always those who seek to turn a profit.<\/p>\n

Most Americans are, however, discouraged from thinking about war this way thanks to the power of what we call \u201cpatriotism\u201d or, at an extreme, \u201csuperpatriotism\u201d when it applies to us, and the significantly more negative \u201cnationalism\u201d or \u201cultra-nationalism\u201d when it appears in other countries.\u00a0 During wars, we\u2019re told to \u201csupport our troops<\/a>,\u201d to wave the flag, to put country first, to respect the patriotic ideal of selfless service and redemptive sacrifice (even if all but 1% of us are never expected to serve or sacrifice).<\/p>\n

We\u2019re discouraged from reflecting on the uncomfortable fact that, as \u201cour\u201d troops sacrifice and suffer, others in society are profiting big time.\u00a0 Such thoughts are considered unseemly and unpatriotic.\u00a0 Pay no attention to the war profiteers, who pass as perfectly respectable companies.\u00a0 After all, any price is worth paying (or profits worth offering up) to contain the enemy — not so long ago, the red menace, but in the twenty-first century, the murderous terrorist.<\/p>\n

Forever war is forever profitable. \u00a0Think of the\u00a0Lockheed Martins<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>of the world.\u00a0 In their commerce with the Pentagon, as well as the militaries of other nations, they ultimately seek cash payment for their weapons and a world in which such weaponry will be eternally needed.\u00a0 In the pursuit of security or victory, political leaders willingly pay their price.<\/p>\n

Call it a Clausewitzian\/Marxian feedback loop or the dialectic of Carl and Karl.\u00a0 It also represents the eternal marriage of combat and commerce.\u00a0 If it doesn\u2019t catch all of what war is about, it should at least remind us of the degree to which war as disaster capitalism is driven by profit and power.<\/p>\n

For a synthesis, we need only turn from Carl or Karl to Cal — President Calvin Coolidge, that is.\u00a0 \u201cThe business of America is business,\u201d he declared in the Roaring Twenties.\u00a0 Almost a century later, the business of America is war, even if today\u2019s presidents are too polite to mention that the business is booming.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s War Heroes as Commodities<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many young people today are, in fact, looking for a release from consumerism.\u00a0 In seeking new identities, quite a few turn to the military.\u00a0 And it provides.\u00a0 Recruits are hailed as\u00a0warriors and warfighters<\/a>, as\u00a0heroes<\/a>, and not just within the military either, but by\u00a0society at large<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet in joining the military and being celebrated for that act, our troops paradoxically become yet another commodity, another consumable of the state.\u00a0 Indeed, they become consumed by war and its violence. \u00a0Their compensation? \u00a0To be packaged and marketed as the heroes of our militarized moment.\u00a0Steven Gardiner, a cultural anthropologist and U.S. Army veteran, has written eloquently about what he calls the \u201cheroic masochism<\/a>\u201d of militarized settings and their allure for America\u2019s youth.\u00a0 Put succinctly, in seeking to escape a consumerism that has lost its meaning and find a release from dead-end jobs, many volunteers are transformed into celebrants of violence, seekers and givers of pain, a harsh reality Americans ignore as long as that violence is acted out overseas against our enemies and local populations.<\/p>\n

Such \u201cheroic\u201d identities, tied so closely to violence in war, often prove poorly suited to peacetime settings.\u00a0 Frustration and demoralization devolve intodomestic violence<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0suicide<\/a>.\u00a0 In an American society with ever fewer meaningful peacetime jobs, exhibiting greater and greater polarization of wealth and opportunity, the decisions of some veterans to turn to or return to mind-numbing drugs of various sorts and soul-stirring violence is tragically predictable.\u00a0 That it stems from their exploitative commodification as so many heroic inflictors of violence in our name is a reality most Americans are content to forget.<\/p>\n

You May Not Be Interested in War, but War Is Interested in You<\/strong><\/p>\n

As Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky pithily observed, \u201cYou may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.\u201d\u00a0 If war is combat and commerce, calamity and commodity, it cannot be left to our political leaders alone — and certainly not to our generals.\u00a0 When it comes to war, however far from it we may seem to be, we\u2019re all in our own ways customers and consumers.\u00a0 Some pay a high price.\u00a0 Many pay a little.\u00a0 A few gain a lot.\u00a0 Keep an eye on those few and you\u2019ll end up with a keener appreciation of what war is actually all about.<\/p>\n

No wonder our leaders tell us not to worry our little heads about our wars — just support those troops, go shopping, and keep waving that flag.\u00a0 If patriotism is famously the last refuge of the scoundrel, it\u2019s also the first recourse of those seeking to mobilize customers for the latest bloodletting exercise in combat as commerce.<\/p>\n

Just remember: in the grand bargain that is war, it\u2019s their product and their profit.\u00a0 And that\u2019s no bargain for America, or for that matter for the world.<\/p>\n

William Astore, a\u00a0<\/em>TomDispatch regular<\/em><\/a>, is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF).\u00a0 He edits the blog\u00a0<\/em>contraryperspective.com<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and may be reached at<\/em>wjastore@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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