Thursday, August 28, 2008

The Return of Illusory Metastability

Mea culpa. I was wrong. (Or, rather, I think I was probably wrong.) When the Cold War ended, I believed that this signalled the beginning of the dynamic, multi-polar world. I believed that the world had entered a state of flux destined to eventually lead to a state of overall stability underpinned by an ever-shifting system of heterogeneous actors constantly rising, collapsing, changing. I saw the emergence of Thales' universe, a world made of water and full of gods, rythmic, predictable, but never quite stable. I was wrong.

The U.S. led (read: perpetrated) invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan were purportedly undertaken for the purpose of bringing order to chaos, but this is an inversion of the reality of the situation (if reality is a concept that we can even refer to straight-faced). The system was already stable. Poverty and repression are not synonymous with chaos. The removal of two deeply repressive mechanisms did nothing to provide stability, but instead revealed that the uni-polar world of US hegemony lacked the requisite stability for the modern system of all-imersive Capitalism to function effectively.

Notably, neither of these systems was truly antithetical to the Capitalist system. Iraq, were it not for UN sanctions, would have proven fertile ground for Capitalism, and though Afghanistan's Taliban rulers maintained a policy of anti-Capitalist theocracy domestically, they were more than happy to supply the remainder of the world with opium and its most capitalist deriviative, heroin, that tranquilizer purged of its connection to nature, abstracted from any possibility of a mystic dimension. The crime of the former was that of pretending to non-alignment. The crime of the latter was of harboring a virus dangerous to the entire system.

Had the US merely invaded the latter, there would be no shake-up, no risk of a new bi-polar world. The purging of the Taliban would merely have increased opium production, merely have created a zone of instability to be filled by some amalgamation of strong-men. The invasion of Iraq, however, functioned like an autoimmune disease of the Capitalist system. Capital's strongest agent destabilizing a resource-rich area with a leader willing to play by the rules. Not the pseudo-political "rules" of the international political "order," but the rules of Capital. An agent willing to sell resources for the pretense of power was subjected to violence where an exchange of value would have sufficed.

This violation of the rules of Capital has prompted a response from Capital in the form of bi-polar escalation with Russia. America's lapse into the use of actual power instead of Capital's preferred mechanisms has prompted a similar response from Russia, the only agent capable of restoring the illusion of metastability that is mutually-assured destruction. Deterrence previously existed between Capital (power by the subtle violence of the market) and anti-Capital (power by overt violence), creating perfect stability. But in this potential future Capital will play both sides of the board. If deterrence was merely illusion before, it will be doubly so now. For while in the previous system the macabre threat of annihilation preserved the status quo, in this system there need not even be a reminder of potential annihilation. The world may conveniently slip into the dynamic of two Bell spinoffs, each comfortable with failing to compete. No conspiracy needed, merely an independent recognition that the status quo will be maintained regardless.

Of course, this bi-polarity need only exist to provide stability until "peacefully rising China" eclipses it. Capitalism is not a liberal ideal. It does not prefer civil liberties or mass-surveillance. It does not prefer freedom to opression. It can prosper in either environment. China's surveillance and repression is fine with Capital so long as it is directed solely at the non-economic choices of its citizens. Soon China will recognize the pacification mechanism inherent in Capital, rebellion on a t-shirt, subversion via the unread blog post. With China's inevitable rise will come the eclipse of the briefly revived struggle of the titans, and with it the reign of the all-seeing Zeus, patron diety of the contract, of the rules of Capital.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Winning the War: How Conflicts are Defined and Redefined Four Dimensionally

Winning in any modern conflict is little different strategically than winning in any ancient conflict. The choice of the battlefield is frequently the decisive factor. However, in modern warfare, which, as Baudrillard points out so frequently, is hardly warfare at all, the choice of latitude, longitude, and altitude (or in political terms: issues, positions, and gravitas) is hardly as important as the selection of the time frame. I do not mean this in the classical sense of selecting the appropriate moment for action, the perfect time to strike a killing blow. I am referring to the modern trend in winning conflicts by only referencing a certain discreet section of time. This confinement of realitiy was once reserved for history books and chosen in order to allow the human mind to categorize data. However, in recent years it has become common to shift referential points to redefine conflicts.

To deal with a concrete military example, in Iraq there is a trend to narrow the referential points both temporally and spatially to include only those areas of space and time in which "The Surge" was employed as the only areas of import. The disaster of Iraq is already, by any reasonable standard, a failure. Clausewitz would likely deficate himself at the mere thought of referencing any of our Iraqi endeavor as a victory. He might have a second go-round if he were told of this "Surge" and its innovative tactic of deploying a large number of troops to quell low-intensity fighting. The very idea that "The Surge" (perhaps a name more fitting for an energy drink than a military strategy) is innovative is belied by a mere glance at the military advice provided by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Shinseki, who, as those astute enough to remember that the Iraq war began before "The Surge" will know, posited that a similar troop level (per number of civilians, not overall) would be neccessary to achieve any kind of actual victory in Iraq. He was forced to retire before the actual invasion. The referentials of both the war and the concept of deploying a sizable force have been shifted by the sorceres of PR to ensure that they are viewed as creatures of the very recent past. "The Surge" has been further truncated by giving it the simulated lifespan of a mayfly. It, apparently, is completed and a success. That it may need to continue indefinitely in order to continue suppressing any violent conflict is never discussed. That it is a common tactic, used by any imperial power seeking domination over an area unwilling to readily submit to foreign control (direct or indirect) is never mentioned. It is "The Surge," the all-powerful, eternally successful, throughly innovative strategy of General Petraeus, a trademarked, branded sacred cow of militaristic prowess. Absurd. It's logic is as simple and eternally damning as that of a child taking the field with plastic army men. Locate the places where the enemy is attacking my men, and send more men until it stops. The unfortunate problem is that this scenario never ends. Ask the Vietnamese, the Russians, the Celtic Britons, and any other insurgency that ever succeeded.

This same shifting of references is consistently employed in the political arena as well (even presuming that the war and its referentials are not wholly creatures of the political realm). Senator McCain has consistently reinvented himself and somehow altered the reference points of his own career to span nearly forty years while skipping some of the most notable moment. The Senator is clearly setting a temporal agenda worthy of a Greek god by including in his own personal timeline his time in a Vietnamese prison camp and his "maverick" leadership on campaign finance reform while skipping over his membership in the illustrious Keating Five.

Of course, Obama is guilty of the same skillful manipulation of the time frame. He has repeatedly insisted on the relevance of his stance on the invasion of Iraq prior to its occurance. However, to suggest that the then State Senator for Illinois was in a situation where his opposition was either relevant or rooted in a situational similarity to his colleagues in the Senate is absurd. Its effectiveness is rooted in Obama's ability to conquer so much of the public spectacle. His ubiquity makes his presence seem to extend into the past and future, as though he were conquering time itself. His token opposition as a charismatic lawmaker unknown outside of his home state has grown with his media image into a full-blown simulacrum of not merely a vote, but leadership against a war that should have never happened.