The Biopolitics of Baghdad: Counterinsurgency and the counter-city

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Interventions ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Dramatic Reduction ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Political Effects ◽  
Military Violence ◽  
The Us ◽  
Late Modern ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

Soon after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US military began to explore culture-centric warfare as a means of finding the terms for both occupation and counterinsurgency. The power of the new doctrine is supposed to have been proved by the success of the surge in US combat troops that started in February 2007, which incorporated the new emphases on protecting the civilian population and on ‘non-kinetic’ (non-violent operations), and which has been credited with bringing about a dramatic reduction in ethno-sectarian deaths in Baghdad. This argument ignores the intensification of kinetic operations in and around the capital and the consequent spike in deaths caused by military violence, and it minimizes the role of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in eventually reducing ethno-sectarian deaths as Baghdad rapidly turned from a predominantly Sunni to an overwhelmingly Shia city. These erasures are not accidental: they are directly connected to carefully calculated political effects that result from presenting culture-centric warfare in general and the Surge in particular as intrinsically therapeutic interventions. Such a strategy obscures crucial ways in which the Baghdad Security Plan was complicit in and capitalized on the ethno-sectarian restructuring of the capital. Conversely, disclosure of these connections reveals that political-military and paramilitary operations in Baghdad have frozen rather than resolved the conflict, and that they exemplify a late modern security apparatus that is not only geopolitical but also profoundly biopolitical.

US-China Relations

2019 ◽  
pp. 571-589
Author(s):  
Clay Wilson ◽  
Nicole Drumhiller
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Economic Disadvantage ◽  
Cyber Warfare ◽  
Private Industry ◽  
National Cultures ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Cyber Espionage

It is assumed by most observers that China is copying or stealing vast amounts of intellectual property from US military and private industry through its cyber espionage activities, and then sharing that information with state-owned industries, giving them unfair economic advantages. The US also conducts cyber espionage against China and other nations, but chooses to not share the vast collections of intellectual property and data with its own domestic industries. By choosing not to do the same thing as China, the US may be placing itself at an economic disadvantage, and may also mistakenly be accusing China of threatening cyber warfare. What is needed is a clearer understanding of differences in national cultures that contribute to intolerance between the US and China when it comes to economics, threats of war, and the evolving new role of cyber espionage.

scholarly journals The Iranian-American competition in Iraq: the political defeat of the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Nikolay Bobkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Military Presence ◽  
Scientific Hypothesis ◽  
The Us ◽  
Political Advantage ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

The article gives an assessment of Iran's policy in neighboring Iraq during the years of the American occupation. The author's scientific hypothesis is that after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran, and not America, became the real beneficiary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The Iranian leadership, interested in changing the Baathist regime in Baghdad, having received such a strategic gift, did everything to use the US military presence to its advantage. The purpose of this study is to analyze the strategy of expanding Iran's influence in Iraq and its impact on US policy. The article shows that the nature of Iran's influence in Iraq included all the elements of state power: diplomatic, informational, military and economic. It is concluded that Tehran managed to take advantage of the democratic reforms in Iraq, which were carried out under the control of Washington. Iran used its Shiite henchmen, which gave it a political advantage over the United States, which did not have such influential allied forces in Iraq. Despite the disparate balance of military forces with America, Iran managed to avoid the risk of war with the United States and move on to achieving its long-term goals in Iraq. In the future, Tehran plans to achieve the rejection of Baghdad from constructive relations with Washington.

scholarly journals Das „gläserne Schlachtfeld“ als soziotechnologisches Leitbild der modernen US-amerikanischen Kriegführung

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (145) ◽  
pp. 519-532
Author(s):  
Jan Benedix
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Role Of It ◽  
And Diffusion

The Information Revolution has leveraged the attention which the academic discourse is paying to the impacts of information and communication technologies, although aspects of how to conceptualize these impacts theoretically are insufficient. Focusing on the role of IT during the rearmament of the US-military since the end of the Cold War a neogramscian perspective on the genesis and diffusion of IT as “political project” is outlined. IT gives a new model of warfare and contributes to the significant consent which the rearmament of the US-military has gained among US-citizens.

scholarly journals AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE US AND THE TALIBAN: START A DIALOGUE

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
D.A. Aitzhanov ◽  
◽  
L.N. Nursultanova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Economic Situation ◽  
Domestic Policy ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us

The authors of the article analyze the situation in Afghanistan: establishing dialogue with Taliban and signing an agreement on a ceasefire, timing of withdrawal of the US military, the economic situation and the protracted political crisis. The role of Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan in addressing this issue is touched. The positions of Russia and China on Afghanistan are similar: strengthening of national army, law enforcement agencies, as well as respect for human rights and freedoms. Iran fears that Pakistan will be able to intervene in Afghanistan’s domestic policy and is therefore taking steps to establish cooperation with the Taliban. The main goal of Pakistan in Afghanistan is to further strengthen its influence in this country and prevent a strong rapprochement with India.

Patriotism, Nationalism and China's US Policy: Structures and Consequences of Chinese National Identity

2011 ◽  
Vol 205 ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Hays Gries ◽  
Qingmin Zhang ◽  
H. Michael Crowson ◽  
Huajian Cai
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Chinese Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
The Us ◽  
Foreign Policy Attitudes

AbstractWhat is the nature of Chinese patriotism and nationalism, how does it differ from American patriotism and nationalism, and what impact do they have on Chinese foreign policy attitudes? To explore the structure and consequences of Chinese national identity, three surveys were conducted in China and the US in the spring and summer of 2009. While patriotism and nationalism were empirically similar in the US, they were highly distinct in China, with patriotism aligning with a benign internationalism and nationalism with a more malign blind patriotism. Chinese patriotism/internationalism, furthermore, had no impact on perceived US threats or US policy preferences, while nationalism did. The role of nationalist historical beliefs in structures of Chinese national identity was also explored, as well as the consequences of historical beliefs for the perception of US military and humiliation threats.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Courtney A. Short
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Work First

This study examines the occupation of Okinawa from the wartime planning stages in late 1944 and early 1945 through to the end of the US Navy’s responsibility for occupation duties in July 1946. In engaging in the historical discourse about the role of race in the Pacific War, two analytical choices drive the structure of this work. First, civilians that ethnically bore more resemblance to the enemy than the invading US forces served as the focal point of American racialized interactions. By examining the contact between a besieged civilian population and the US military rather than the contact between two combatant militaries, the study contests the misleading argument that issues of race in the Pacific War stemmed only from dehumanizing an enemy. A large, mostly docile civilian population complicates the term “enemy” and allows for an exploration of American racism in the Pacific expressed outside of the confines of force-on-force conventional warfare. Second, the environment of combat, central to this historical debate, also features predominantly in my work. The confusion, energy, heightened emotions, delirious exhaustion, life-threatening situations, and trauma of combat pushed the actors involved into dramatic decision making.

scholarly journals The Omniscient Eye: Satellite Imagery, "Battlespace Awareness," and the Structures of the Imperial Gaze

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Harris
Keyword(s):  
Satellite Imagery ◽  
Department Of Defense ◽  
Persian Gulf War ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
Military Control ◽  
The Persian Gulf ◽  
Discursive Power ◽  
Geographical Space

This paper explores the role of aerial and satellite imagery in the US military's command, control, and intelligence (C4I) systems, with an historical focus on the Persian Gulf War of 1991. Using satellite imagery for military intelligence and warfare is part of an ongoing effort in the US Department of Defense to make all cartographic and topographic space, and the objects in it, totally visible and "transparent," what the US military calls "total battlespace awareness." It is where imagery production is attached to concrete and purposive action in the abstract realm of "battlespace," an example of how the mundane and the monstrously violent intersect around the production of visual data and artefacts. Borrowing a metaphor from Paul Edwards, I suggest that satellite imagery can not only "open up" the world (making it transparent), but can also "close down" geographical space under a regime of surveillance and violent military control. The discursive power of aerial and satellite imagery is derived from its position as an objectifying transcendent gaze, above and beyond subjectivity (Donna Haraway's "God Trick"), and when these images are disseminated in the mass media as testaments to military prowess, they become visual representations of geographical domination (as in Denis Cosgrove's "Apollonian Eye"). In this sense, satellite imagery, photo reconnaissance, and imagery interpretation are rich sites and artefacts for exploring how power and national sovereignty turn on the visual.

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