scholarly journals What makes violence martial? Adopt A Sniper and normative imaginaries of violence in the contemporary United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 096701062199722
Author(s):  
Katharine M Millar
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Frantz Fanon ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Military Support ◽  
Global War ◽  
Contemporary United States

What makes violence martial? Contemporary militarism scholarship, owing to an analytical overdetermination of the role of military institutions, frequently conflates martiality with violence writ large. Drawing upon the illustrative case of Adopt A Sniper, a US military support charity founded by police officers operating during the global war on terror and intended to help supporters ‘directly contribute to the killing of the enemy’, this article interrogates the intuitive ‘line’ between martial and other, particularly colonial, forms of violence. To do so, I develop the concept of ‘normative imaginaries of violence’ – articulations of intersubjective beliefs; political community; spatial geographies; gendered, sexualized, racialized and classed power relations; and logics of legitimation. Through this lens, and informed by the work of Frantz Fanon, the article demonstrates that though coloniality and martiality are deeply intertwined, they are neither reducible to nor epiphenomenal of each other. Through a juxtaposition of the titular sniper with two additional figures invoked by Adopt A Sniper – the militiaman and the vigilante – I outline a novel, genealogical method that enables us to trace the entangled histories of contemporary violences and identify the implicit politics of ordering at work in existing, often fragmented, analyses of political violence.

Military Aid, Regime Vulnerability and the Escalation of Political Violence

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Andrew Boutton
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Military Assistance ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Assistance Programs ◽  
Military Aid ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Distinct Mechanism ◽  
Novel Theory ◽  
Military Support

AbstractThis article offers an explanation for the failures of US military assistance programs in some countries. The author argues that the effects of military aid are conditional upon the vulnerability of the recipient regime. Power consolidation by an insecure leader often provokes violent opposition. However, because military aid strengthens the security forces of the recipient state, it generates a moral hazard that encourages exclusionary power consolidation, with the expectation that continued military aid will help manage violent blowback. Using proxies for regime vulnerability and an instrument for US military aid, the study shows that military aid increases anti-regime violence in new regimes (particularly new democracies) and in all personalist regimes. In contrast, military assistance has no effect on violence in established, non-personalist regimes. The article develops a novel theory of how regime characteristics condition responses to external military support, and identifies a distinct mechanism through which military aid increases domestic political violence.

scholarly journals Captured by the camera's eye: Guantánamo and the shifting frame of the Global War on Terror

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 1721-1749 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELSPETH VAN VEEREN
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
War On Terrorism ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Global War On Terrorism ◽  
Guantanamo Bay ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Media ◽  
Donald Rumsfeld ◽  
Global War

AbstractIn January 2002, images of the detention of prisoners held at US Naval Station Guantanamo Bay as part of the Global War on Terrorism were released by the US Department of Defense, a public relations move that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld later referred to as ‘probably unfortunate’. These images, widely reproduced in the media, quickly came to symbolise the facility and the practices at work there. Nine years on, the images of orange-clad ‘detainees’ – the ‘orange series’ – remain a powerful symbol of US military practices and play a significant role in the resistance to the site. However, as the site has evolved, so too has its visual representation. Official images of these new facilities not only document this evolution but work to constitute, through a careful (re)framing (literal and figurative), a new (re)presentation of the site, and therefore the identities of those involved. The new series of images not only (re)inscribes the identities of detainees as dangerous but, more importantly, work to constitute the US State as humane and modern. These images are part of a broader effort by the US administration to resituate its image, and remind us, as IR scholars, to look at the diverse set of practices (beyond simply spoken language) to understand the complexity of international politics.

scholarly journals The war on meaninglessness: A counter-terrorist self through an absent terrorist other

Ethnography ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 460-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yarin Eski
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Occupational Identity ◽  
Port Security ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Security Officers ◽  
Empirical Context ◽  
Global War

This contribution shall focus on post-9/11 port security, its policing actors and how their occupational, counter-terrorist identity is (re)established. The empirical context of this study is that of operational port police officers and security officers who construct port security in the ports of Rotterdam and Hamburg. Drawing from a multi-sited, ethnographic fieldwork study, specific attention is paid to how operational staff, employed in a highly securitized realm saturated with War on Terror governance, (re)establish their occupational identity through the terrorist other without having ever been confronted, face-to-face, with terrorism. Instead of fighting in a global War on Terror, and given the way they construe their identity through the terrorist other, they endure an everyday War on Meaninglessness.

The barbarians of Fallujah

Race & Class ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Matt Carr
Keyword(s):  
War On Terror ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Moral Legitimacy ◽  
Moral Imperative ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Global War ◽  
The City

The `global war on terror' is often represented as a struggle between incompatible opposites, of good versus evil, terror versus democracy and civilisation versus barbarism. The deployment of such dichotomies was part of the background to the onslaught on Fallujah in 2004, serving to provide the US military with the appearance of moral legitimacy, as it turned the city to rubble in order to `save' it. In the US media, the arrogant assumption that the US is civilisationally superior both to the `barbarians' its armies were fighting in the city and to the broader mass of the Iraqi population, was a recurring theme among neo-conservative and pro-war liberal ideologues. Yet, with the city's destruction presented as a moral imperative on behalf of civilised values, there has been scant examination of the allegations that US forces were guilty of war crimes. Moreover, the attack on Fallujah shows that civilisation and barbarism are not diametrically opposed concepts in a `global war on terror' which continues to cause more death and destruction than the violence it is supposedly intended to eliminate.

Iran: The state and terrorism in Iran

2019 ◽  
pp. 363-384
Author(s):  
Ali M. Ansari
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
State Policy ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
The Us ◽  
Global War ◽  
The Impact

This paper discusses the role of 'terror' and 'terrorism' as an aspect of state policy in Iran during the twentieth century, looking at its historical context both within Qajar Iran and as an aspect of state policy during there French Revolution. The paper critically assesses Iranian state's relationship with the term, as both a perceived victim and perpetrator, and focusses on the application of political violence against both dissidents and political opponents where the term 'terror' is used in Persian as a synonym for assassination. The paper looks at the various justifications for the use of terror and political violence, the legacy of the Rushdie affair and the impact of the US led Global War on Terror on perceptions within Iran. 

Social Practices of Rule-Making and the Global War on Terror

2019 ◽  
pp. 142-202
Author(s):  
Mark Raymond
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Global War ◽  
Rule Making ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

This chapter examines public dialogue between al-Qaeda and the United States from 1996 until the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Both sides spoke clearly and consistently about actual and preferred rules for the international system, and the way they should be applied; and both sides engaged in procedural criticism and justification. Both sides knew that conflict was overdetermined, and that they had deep disagreements about relevant social practices of rule-making. So why engage in futile dialogue? Attempts to reach like-minded audiences clearly matter, but esoteric appeals about legitimate rule-making procedures are typically not expected to move political audiences. The chapter argues that participants on both sides had internalized ideas about legitimate rule-making practices, and tied these understandings to conceptions of the appropriate nature and ends of political community. The case demonstrates the emotional power of secondary rules, and the difficulty of resolving conflict in the absence of common rule-making practices.

scholarly journals Blurred lines

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Omar Dewachi
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Care Professionals ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Moral Framework ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Polio Vaccination ◽  
The Us ◽  
Global War ◽  
Vaccination Campaigns

The neutrality of medicine and health care professionals in different conflict settings in the Middle East have come under scrutiny in recent human rights reports, and should be seen as part of the broader fallout of the US-led ‘global war on terror.’ The last two decades of US military attacks on health infrastructures in Iraq and the use of polio-vaccination campaigns to track down ‘terrorists’ are acts of war that have further blurred the lines between health care and warfare. The failure of international legal processes and institutions to prevent such assaults or to prosecute those responsible raises questions about the Eurocentric system of checks and balances that shape international humanitarian law and its invocation as a ‘legal’ and ‘moral’ framework.

‘Radicalisation: the journey of a concept’, revisited

Race & Class ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 34-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek M. D. Silva
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Security Risk ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
The Past ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Global War ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Governmental Strategy

Over the past decade, radicalisation has emerged as perhaps the most pervasive framework for understanding micro-level transitions towards violence. However, the concept has not only become a dominant policing framework, but also an overarching governmental strategy encompassing surveillance, security, risk and community engagement. The emergence of this strategy has been accompanied by a whole host of analysts, advisers and scholars, who claim to possess ‘expert’ knowledge of individual transitions towards political violence. Revisiting ‘Radicalisation: the journey of a concept’, Arun Kundnani’s 2012 typology of such ‘expertise’ ( Race & Class, doi 10.1177/0306396812454984), the author comparatively examines scholarly developments in relation to ‘radicalisation’ and juxtaposes new knowledge claims with official government counter-radicalisation strategies and funding programmes in the UK, US and Canada to highlight how some of the most problematic knowledge claims continue to influence social policy as we move forward in the global ‘war on terror’.

scholarly journals Medication by Proxy: The Devolution of Psychiatric Power and Shared Accountability to Psychopharmaceutical Use Among Soldiers in America’s Post-9/11 Wars

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-585
Author(s):  
Jocelyn Lim Chua
Keyword(s):  
Military Personnel ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medication Administration ◽  
Mental Health Stigma ◽  
Global War On Terror ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Army Personnel ◽  
Global War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Psychiatric Power

Abstract With the United States military stretched thin in the “global war on terror,” military officials have embraced psychopharmaceuticals in the effort to enable more troops to remain “mission-capable.” Within the intimate conditions in which deployed military personnel work and live, soldiers learn to read for signs of psychopharmaceutical use by others, and consequently, may become accountable to those on medication in new ways. On convoys and in the barracks, up in the observation post and out in the motor pool, the presence and perceived volatility of psychopharmaceuticals can enlist non-medical military personnel into the surveillance and monitoring of medicated peers, in sites far beyond the clinic. Drawing on fieldwork with Army personnel and veterans, this article explores collective and relational aspects of psychopharmaceutical use among soldiers deployed post-9/11 in Iraq and Afghanistan. I theorize this social landscape as a form of “medication by proxy,” both to play on the fluidity of the locus of medication administration and effects within the military corporate body, and to emphasize the material and spatial ways that proximity to psychopharmaceuticals pulls soldiers into relationships of care, concern and risk management. Cases presented here reveal a devolution and dispersal of biomedical psychiatric power that complicates mainstream narratives of mental health stigma in the US military.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document