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- The affirmatives depiction of war only re-creates conflict, destroys human identity, and wrongly legitimizes the state Walker 87
War Reps Bad – Pos PeaceTheir representation of war only recreates the conditions for war, justifies militarization, and exacerbates insecurity Walker 87 (R.B.J., Tampere Peace Research Institute at the University of Tampere, Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada, editor of the journal International Political Sociology, “CULTURE, DISCOURSE, INSECURITY,” 1987, Current Research on Peace and Violence, Vol. 10, No. 1, WAR, PEACE & CULTURE (1987), pp. 50-64, JSTOR)//PC The language in which modern weapons deploy- ments are portrayed requires particularly careful exa- mination. As noted earlier, the term "arms race" is especially misleading. Similarly, the term 'deterrence' brings with it meanings and implications that both elucidate and obscure what is going on. Consider, for example, the way deterrence theory incorporates the term 'balance', as in balance of power, which can mean both preponderance (as with a bank balance) or equilibrium. This difference is crucial to the debate between deterrence and war fighting schools of nu- clear strategy. In conventional military terms, the more and bigger, the better. For classical minimum deterrence, enough is enough.15 Similar ambiguities arise from the use of terms like "modernization", or the depiction of strategic deployments quantitatively rather than qualitatively. The prevalence of "nukespeak", as such usages have come to be called, does not exhaust the impor- tance of language in this context. Indeed, as some of the terms already mentioned may suggest, what is important here is less the linguistic characteristics of particular words or the propagandists intentions of specific usages than the discourses about military affairs in which particular words and intentions parti- cipate. Two terms with very deep historical and cul- tural roots are particularly suggestive here: the 'ene- my' and 'peace'. The concept of the 'enemy' invokes a very complex theme within Western culture concerning 'the Other'. This theme comes in many forms, from the dialectical logic of master and slave to the projections of psychoa- nalysis. In its crudest forms, a manicheism prevails; we have truth, reason and God, they have supersti- tion, barbarism and the devil. This theme is familiar enough in many of our categorizations of the so-called insane, in the social construction of gender, and in relations between the West and the rest whether this has been the Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union, or the Third World.16 It has been particularly pro- nounced in the recent rhetoric of the Cold War. The wider implications invoked by references to an enemy are closely related to the highly problematic nature of the concept of peace. Here problems arise from false distinctions between war and peace in an era in which preparations for war are an increasingly important aspect of peace-time activity. Problems also arise from definitions of peace as the mere absence of war, or from attempts to reconcile peace with other cherished values like 'justice'. But perhaps most significantly, our commonest understandings of the meaning of peace in Western societies embody conceptions of universalism that reflect a culturally specific philosophical tradition. Most obviously, peace has been associated with claims to unity, with universalist claims about the priority of order over conflict. The philosophy of Immanuel Kant is sym- bolic in this respect. With Kant, the possibility of peace is explicitly linked to the realization of uni- versal reason. This connection in turn grows out of a commonly perceived philosophical tradition that goes back to classical Greece. In fact, the conceptual opposition between war and peace reflects a wider philosophical discourse in which the moment of unity or identity is linked with the good, the true and the beautiful. Diversity and difference are then treated as the inferior negations of these privileged values. And, of course, whether one understands this cultural tradition in terms of the rise of secular rationalism, or of the convergence of rationalism with religious monotheism, the postulation of a single moment of unity, identity and truth allows for a sharp distinction between those who can and those who cannot claim to have access to it. A concept of peace that is firmly attached to extreme universalism easily permits a rapid slide into a manichean world of friend and foe. In short, to examine terms like enemy or peace is to recognize the depth and complexity of the broader discourses in which specific linguistic meanings are constituted. Manipulative rhetoric and propaganda become less important than the capacity of such dis- courses to generate and limit our understanding of the way the world is, and even to specify the options avail- able for the world to become. Something like Michel Foucault's (1979, 1978) analysis of the discourses through which our understanding of madness and sexuality have been constituted, is therefore called for here. The examples of the terms "enemy" and "peace" also suggest that the starting point for any such analy- sis must be the way our understanding of modern military affairs is caught up in a culturally and histori- cally specific discourse dominated by a sharply dicho- tomized account of the relationship between the prin- ciple of identity or unity and the principle of differ- ence or pluralism. I have argued elsewhere that it is precisely this account that informs the most influ- ential modern theories of international politics (Walk- er (forthcoming), Walker 1984a, 1984b. See also Ash- ley). More specifically, it underlies both the contrast between political realists and political idealists, and between forms of political realism informed by a sense of history and change (Machiavelli) and those informed by a structuralist account of inter-state rela- tions (Hobbes). This account has predisposed ana- lyses of change in international politics to pose possi- bilities for the future as either a tragic continuation of the same old game of power and war or a historic leap towards a universalist global community. It is not immediately obvious that this either/or choice is war- ranted by the historical evidence or by the indicators of current trends available to us. Nevertheless, this formulation continues to have a powerful grip on con- temporary thinking about international politics. It informs both textbooks and policy prescriptions. And it is clearly visible in public debate between "hawks" and "doves" on military issues, at least in the North American context. A critical assessment of these pre- dispositions is essential. These discourses constitute one of the most power- ful expressions of the connection between culture, broadly conceived, and emerging processes of milita- rization. On one level, they can be understood as par- ticipating in the processes of cultural production. They generate popular images and meanings as well as inform the interpretive codes of specific research communities. On another level, they reflect, and ob- scure, deep tensions within the dominant cultural tra- ditions of Western modernity. Our thinking about the nature of war and the possibilities of peace, for example, is frequently structured by an underlying tension between the philosophical principles of iden- tity and difference. It is not difficult to show that the limits to our understanding of reason, democracy, and security are implicated in similar tension. On a third level, they reproduce assumptions about the location of human identity and political action. Where modern forms of militarization demand great- er and greater attention to their impact on both global structures and the local activities of everyday life, these discourses reproduce a vision of politics as either the presence or absence of the state. Unfortu- nately, while the state has long been the form of politi- cal community that has been able to claim legitimacy and obligation precisely because of this capacity to provide security for its citizens, contemporary forms of militarization have begun to turn the state into a primary source of insecurity. It is in terms of the theory of the modern state, therefore, that the connec- tion between culture and insecurity must be estab- lished most clearly. The affirmatives depiction of war only re-creates conflict, destroys human identity, and wrongly legitimizes the state Walker 87 (R.B.J., Tampere Peace Research Institute at the University of Tampere, Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada, editor of the journal International Political Sociology, “CULTURE, DISCOURSE, INSECURITY,” 1987, Current Research on Peace and Violence, Vol. 10, No. 1, WAR, PEACE & CULTURE (1987), pp. 50-64, JSTOR)//PC At a second level, militarization can be linked both to the tensions within the cultural traditions of West- ern modernity and to the sophisticated discursive structures about war and peace that have arisen within these cultural traditions. On the one hand, this suggests the need for a cultural politics aimed at unco- vering these tensions. That we live in a society that claims Enlightenment but advances barbarism, that claims democracy but enhances the secret state, that claims security but accumulates the power of mutual suicide, are fundamental points that demand constant exposure. On the other hand, there is the need for a cultural politics aimed at defusing the dominant dis- courses about war and peace. In the Western context these discourses reflect a heritage of Western rational- ism. Consequently, the critique of militarization ine- vitably becomes trapped in the familiar logic of iden- tity versus difference, order versus conflict, universa- list community versus pluralist conflict. This logic issues in the co-optation of dissent and the continued legitimation of present practices. Hence the crucial importance of refusing any simple dichotomization of the claims of identity and difference.17 Where militari- zation is often justified by the claim that human socie- ties are different, and therefore inevitably in conflict, and where opposition to militarization coalesces on propositions about the essential unity of human existence, it now seems necessary to stress the claims of both unity and diversity as a starting point for any formulation of more peaceful possibilities. Both levels lead on to the third, and it is here that the most important issues arise. In this context, the relation between culture and militarization appears as a reconstruction of the horizons of human identity. On the one hand this is felt as an expansion, a recogni- tion of the global structures in which we all partici- pate, whether we wish it or not. On the other it is felt as a contraction, a fusion of the most global structures with the minutest activities of everyday life. Yet this occurs at precisely the same time that the currently most powerful focus of human identity - the state - is becoming ever more powerful. In the more prosper- ous societies, processes of militarization seem to be enhancing the power of the state at the same time that the state is less and less able to justify its claims on human identity. In less prosperous societies, the state retains legitimacy in part because of its role in resist- ing more powerful states. It does so by entering fur- ther and further into the structures of militarization that render human security in general increasingly problematic. Perhaps the sharpest way of posing these connec- tions between culture, insecurity and the state is in terms of the broad problematic announced by the term "bureaucracy". It is here that many of the themes raised so far begin to come together. In the context of cultural production, questions of war and peace now engage very large bureaucratic institutions. Where it is tempting to analyse modern weapons deployments through general theories about the logic of deterrence or the determinations of technological innovation, it is often much more ins- tructive to enquire into the detailed analysis of the bureaucratic routines and rivalries that mediate spe- cific decisions.18 One of the most interesting issues here concerns the way modern military-bureaucratic structures reach out into a very broad sector of the intelligentsia. In the American case, for example, we can point to the symbolic early case of the Rand Corporation, the development of deterrence theory by ex-economists, and the proliferation of research institutions and uni- versity research projects dependent on defense fund- ing. Conversely, modern American social theory con- tinues to reflect an understanding of social life through metaphors and models stimulated by mili- tary research, as with cybernetics, game theory, opera- tions research and systems analysis. Here it is possible to analyse the relationship between particular bureaucratic institutions and the more general pro- cesses of cultural production and reproduction. It is also possible to examine the specific way in which policy is constituted through particular discursive structures. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 0.86 Mb. Share with your friends:
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