The Normalization of Militarism in the US (Normalization Pt 2)

In my first post on normalization and ideology, I laid out the case for the relationship between those two concepts.  This post is a continuation on my analysis of normalization, as I dive into more specific examples.  First up:  militarism.

Introduction

The transition to a new political regime is a phenomenon well-suited to ideological analysis because it helps reveal what is normal versus what is exceptional:  the new regime will change some things while keeping others the same.  While political and media coverage will focus on the changes, any serious study of ideology demands focus on the continuity, because ideology is constitutive of our common-sense understandings of the world.  One of the most pervasive ideologies in American political discourse is militarism.  There has been incredible continuity in the ideological and social perspectives that are tapped to run US foreign and defense policy.  This post will focus on how militarism continues to be normalized in politics.  First, I will outline the contours of militarism, showing that it is an ideology.  Second, as all acts of normalization also require the invocation of the exceptional, often portrayed as crisis, I will analyze the role of crisis discourse in militarism.  Third, I will examine the continuity of militarism across supposedly divergent political parties.  Finally, I will discuss the implications of the ideological hegemony of militarism.

The phrase “forever wars” has gained much political currency in recent years, due (among other factors) to a combination of the catastrophic failures of the imperial project in Afghanistan and Iraq, the continued expansion of national security operations into other countries (with no congressional approval), and the brief national relevance of Tulsi Gabbard as a combat veteran who ran for president on an anti-war platform.  Despite this resurgence in anti-war rhetoric, military budgets are as bloated as ever and the US is not winding down any of its ongoing operations- Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan are just a few.  The new presidential administration has also shown that an area of continuity between Democrat and Republican leadership is their embrace of the national security state. Militarism is the ideology that generates the consent of the public to support all aspects of the military-industrial complex. 

 

Militarism As Ideology

Militarism is defined as “the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests.” Even a cursory reading of this definition highlights militarism-as-ideology.  It is rooted in belief, it presents its normative commitment as a matter of common-sense, and it is experienced at a group level.  A belief in militarism sets aside any questioning of the value of a strong military, whether militaristic solutions are appropriate for solving problems, or whether the interests of the militaristic nation ought to be suppressed in favor of the needs of others. Militarism sets all of these questions aside by presenting the necessity of military capabilities and their utility in solving problems as common sense. 

All three functions of ideology- naturalization, historicization, and eternalization- are used to further promote militarism.  Military conflict, capability, and aggression are all rendered part of human nature through their normalization.  There is no point in questioning the necessity of militarism because it will inevitably return as a cycle in the human condition.  This rhetoric is on display all the time as politicians and leaders assert that they don’t want or prefer to use the military, but the aggressive nature of states demands that it be wielded as a latent capability in any case.  

The military is historicized through the cultural glorification of past military conflicts- each presented as a necessary step in the evolution of democracy, liberalism, capitalism, and Western civilization.  History is often taught as a sequence of military conflicts- each one with a good and evil side; each one advancing or repelling progress and enlightenment.  This linear project of history both supplements the naturalization of militarism (it has always been so!) and serves as a bulwark against peace advocates that demand new approaches to managing international relations.  

Finally, militarism is eternalized as an inescapable ideology that will continue its reign in perpetuity. Our adversaries are always seeking to close the gap with the US, our allies are always vulnerable, and our world class military is always on the brink of being rendered irrelevant.  War never changes. These three functions- naturalization, historicization, and eternalization- all work in tandem to present militarism as common-sense.  It is natural, inevitable, and necessary. As it takes on the ideological form of common sense, it normalizes this set of beliefs and assumptions about the world, papering over the political antagonisms that drive militarism- a process called depoliticization.

The Role of Crisis in Militarism

All normalization depends on the presentation of the exceptional, invoked as crisis.  Normal can only be rendered coherent in the face of a crisis that threatens its universality and application- you have to give people something to fear to show them that normal is better.  Among other things, this is the logical basis for the “lesser of two evils” approach to politics. It also presents a symbiotic relationship between normal and crisis that becomes stark when examining militarism.  Because of its focus on international conflict, direct violence, and the threat of violence, militarism is overtly dependent on crisis.  The military is literally presented as a solution to the appearance of crisis, and the solution always requires lots of money, but never critical refuasal- giving further credence to the framework of militarism-as-ideology. The lack of military capability itself is often presented as a crisis.  The role of crisis is to further the material interests of capitalists by presenting their needs as a) common sense and b) perfectly in line with the needs of all people.  It shifts participation in the military industrial complex from a selfish and profit-oriented enterprise to a public service that just coincidentally is also the source of billions of dollars in wealth for private individuals. 

Justifying this level of transfer of resources is not natural, inevitable, or eternal.  To gain the consent of the public, you need the presence of an enemy to be guarded against- the presence of crisis.  During the Cold War, it was the USSR.  After the dissolution of the USSR, it became the threat from rogue or fragile states.  Once 9/11 occurred, it shifted to non-state actors (terrorist groups).  Now, threats are an amalgamation, with terrorists, Putin, China, and failed states always threatening ‘national security’ (a concept that has become an empty symbolic container).  The solution to all of these threats is found in increasing the resources committed to maintaining a robust and technologically superior military capability.  The use of crisis in these examples serves to normalize the first aspect of militarism: that countries should have a strong military capability. 

The second component of militarism, that countries need to be ready to aggressively use their military capabilities to defend their national interests, operates using a similar, supplemental strand of discourse. When elites are articulating threats from other countries as crises, they tout the necessity of US presence for international peace.  It is not just the actions of other countries that risk instability- US military presence itself is seen as a force critical for stability and peace. This discourse operates to normalize US presence by presenting it as an intrinsic, unquestionable good.  An entire set of questions about the origins of violence, what types of violence should be prioritized, and whether the US military increases or decreases violence in these regions are all depoliticized as unchangeable givens.

Crisis serves as the mechanism to depoliticize this commitment of resources by placing that commitment off the table as a matter of common and universal necessity.  It is ideology in one of its most pure forms. These supposed threats show the dual nature of state control over what is politically possible:  the material threat of Russia, China, or terrorism is matched by an ideological threat. Even if they don’t directly threaten our physical existence, it is our very way of life that they oppose (they hate us for our freedom!).  This is a shoddy intellectual justification that at best can be distilled to the adolescent phrase “they hate us ‘cause they ain’t us.” Militarism further serves an ideological purpose by taking challenges to Western capital (I emphasize Western because these countries are all supportive of capitalism) and giving them a material, security-based presence.  The threat goes from something that is just an idea to something that threatens our material existence.  By fusing the two, militarism makes us believe that even the specter of ideological disagreement should be treated as a threat to our physical autonomy.

Why Militarism?

In my last post on normalization, I discussed the necessity of ideology in creating stable relations of production across time.  For any social order to survive, it must be reproduced from one generation to the next.  This is especially important in a capitalist economy because of the contradictions it generates: it creates instability and inequality, but also requires some level of stability for the continuous circulation of goods and services- capitalists need predictability in markets, supply chains, etc.  The generation of militarism is not spontaneous- it is rooted in a set of material interests, and the continuation of those interests is only possible if the population consents to the ideas and structures that allow those interests to flourish.  The material interests come directly- from an arms industry that can only survive if there are sufficient threats to generate demand for their products- and indirectly- aside from the specific considerations of the MIC, there is a need to maintain open access and stability in markets for US corporations in other industries (namely raw materials and secondary manufacturing).

The emergence of the material interests of the defense industry and capitalism writ large generates the need for a mechanism that can gain the populations consent.  Here is the space into which ideology operates.  It is the glue that binds the dialectic of base (material interest) and superstructure (maintenance of the ideology needed to sustain the base).  The military industrial complex invests billions of dollars into manipulating our social and cultural spheres to naturalize the role of the military, the necessity of military intervention as a solution to societal problems, and the limited belief that direct, physical violence is the unique threat to our existence.

Normalizing Militarism Across Administrations

One pervasive mechanism is through the proliferation of thank tanks, lobbyists, and consultants that advocate on behalf of the defense industry.  Think tanks are glorified lobbyists that write and suggest legislation, produce research papers outlining important issues that require government attention, and saturate media and news coverage with their perspective, usually justified by referencing themselves as “national security experts.”  There is nothing the media and politicians in DC love more than credentials. What is usually unstated is that these think tanks are funded by corporations and the supporting class of professionals that staff these corporations.  Typically, these corporations work in finance, natural resources, and defense.  These are the triple pillars of international exploitation fostered by capitalism.  Finance companies want to ensure that the foreign assets and debts they control are honored.  Natural resource extraction firms want access to new markets to extract, process, and manufacture for the American consumer.  Defense firms need bloated military presence and the fear of conflict to bolster their bottom lines.  A recent report shows that over a billion dollars from private and public defense sectors flows into the top fifty think tanks. 

Think tanks, lobbyists, and consultants often have direct access to government, but are still a step removed from having the agency to directly make decisions in government.  Theoretically, this could provide the government with a buffer in which to critically examine and challenge militarist ideology.  Unfortunately, government itself is not any better.  A quick examination of recent administrations will suffice in proving this point.  In sociological studies that examine the networks used in presidential administrations, there is a stark level of homogenization in the backgrounds of decision makers and advisors.  These individuals come from industries with very specific view points on global affairs, assumptions about what problems government should prioritize, and, most importantly, distinct sets of material interests. Recall that ideology is about depoliticizing antagonistic political relationships by papering over them.  By using the language of meritocracy and credentials, politicians are able to take highly specific perspectives and present them as natural outcomes of winning some battle of ideas in a noble and free exchange, as though militarism and finance are naturally the purview of the most gifted among us, and not propelled by the trillions of dollars globally spent in their name.  

Below is a chart of the network of key figures in the Obama administration.  I will cover both Democratic and Republican administrations, but I begin with Obama because a primary theme of his political ascendency was his progressive rhetoric, with a key message being his early opposition to the Iraq War.  Perhaps we can discuss how well this perspective turned out for Libyans and Syrians in another post. After the chart of Obama’s administration, you will see a picture of the same analysis conducted on the George W Bush administration.

Varieties of US Post-Cold War Imperialism: Anatomy of a Failed Hegemonic Project and the Future of US Geopolitics, Critical Sociology 37(4) 403–427

 

Here is the same analysis done on the George W Bush administration:

 

Varieties of US Post-Cold War Imperialism: Anatomy of a Failed Hegemonic Project and the Future of US Geopolitics, Critical Sociology 37(4) 403–427

The continuity between both administrations is substantial.  While Obama was heralded as a rupture in the militarist policies of the Bush administration, even winning the Nobel Peace Prize for merely being elected, a closer look reveals that the same material and ideological interest are served in both administrations.  This is the part of my post where I re-explain that I am not drawing a clear, 100 percent equivalency between the two administrations.  One can have meaningful, well-intentioned debates about “who was worse,” but from the perspective of ideology those debates would generously be described as tinkering with the margins.  

It is crucial to understand that ideology is never critically uncovered in these debates at the margins, the debates over slight differences, or the debates about tactic over strategy.  These are, in fact, spaces of pure ideology because they immediately presuppose a large set of assumptions are off the table. While issues of defense can have direct, physical implications for people, in the aggregate they change very little about the way society is structured, how that structure is enforced, and who benefits from it.  They paper over the antagonistic material relationships that lie underneath, which is the space of the Political.  The Political should be the space where we openly question the relationship between these material interests and the values of their advocates; where we openly question our definitions of peace and violence; where we have competing exercises of power that are open about the constituencies they represent.

Returning to these two charts, GW Bush had more direct influence from the defense industry, while Obama’s administration was more reliant on the consultant/lobbying class, and the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) industries.  Despite that, as a whole there is nearly universal overlap - it is just a question of which segments of the corporate professional class wield more influence. One cannot reasonably assert that there are antagonistic or fundamental differences between the worldviews of these elites. We must also keep in mind that these industries are not so easily separable from one another.  As I’ve shown above, many of these secondary industries are still intertwined in the material interests of defense- the finance sector invests in defense and depends on global stability to ensure predictable market access.  The consultant/lobbying industry is largely funded by corporate firms that focus on defense.  They are all variations on one central capitalist ideology that believes the preservation of profit is intrinsically good and necessary for societal advancement.

There is no solace to be found in the GOP being any better with time.  Trump’s administration, much like GW Bush’s, was stocked to the brim with individuals from the defense sector of the economy:

All three of his hand-picked defense secretaries had ties to the defense industry: Jim Mattis was a member of the General Dynamics board of directors, Pat Shanahan was an executive with Boeing, and Mark Esper was Raytheon's top lobbyist. Mattis also returned to his board position shortly after leaving the Pentagon, showing the revolving door between industry and the Defense Department.

Nearly half of senior Defense Department officials are connected to military contractors, according to an analysis by the Project on Government Oversight.

Trump’s rhetoric on “draining the swamp” was made in bad faith, and his defense department administrators are clear evidence of this.  There is at least a glimmer of honesty on display when these individuals are placed in key government positions:  that the ‘national’ in national security actually refers to a limited number of corporate defense contractors and the professional class that works to maintain their influence in Washington, DC.

Biden has offered no disruption in this routinized placement of key defense business interests in leadership positions that control US foreign policy.  Defense is an area of policy that congress and the courts have little oversight on. Foreign policy is almost exclusively the purview of the executive branch of government.  This lack of external accountability is only compounded by an administration filled with no ideological diversity, ensuring there is no internal accountability.  When key decisions are being made, it is clear whose interests are at the forefront of the minds of the decision makers.

The first signal that Biden would be no disruptor in this unethical and corrupt revolving door came during his transition.  The agency review team Biden formed for the Department of Defense, tasked with finding, vetting, and preparing candiddates for the administration, was dominated by individuals  who directly or indirectly were employed by the defense industry. One such example was Center for Strategic and International Studies, “a hawkish and influential foreign policy think tank that receives funding from General Dynamics Corporation, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Lockheed Martin Corporation and other weapons manufacturers and defense contractors, as well as oil companies.”

Lloyd Austin, Biden’s secretary of defense, was on the board of Raytheon at the time of his nomination.  He has received compensation from Raytheon in the millions, including lucrative stock options.  His personal interests are deeply intertwined with those of Raytheon, a company that depends on military modernization, military intervention, and military arms sales to increase its rates of profit.  The conflict of interest is obvious. No reasonable person could assume that he will somehow shed both his personal material interests, or the militaristic ideology that supports them.  In a country of 300 million people, his viewpoint and concerns will come from a narrow slice, one that depends on war and the threat of war for economic survival. Even setting aside the ethical concern with one’s livelihood depending on the death of others, there are pragmatic concerns about how objective one could be if they serve both corporate and government actors.

Biden’s Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, has a background that includes recent employment at West Exec and Pine Capital.  West Exec is a national security consulting firm that was started by former Obama administration officials.  They openly advertise that they have access to government thinking, and know how to get the interests of their clients from the board room to the situation room.

The New York Times hasa great summary of the relationship between these nominee, West Exec, and Pine Capital:

WestExec’s founders include Antony J. Blinken, Mr. Biden’s choice to be his secretary of state, and Michèle A. Flournoy, one of the leading candidates to be his defense secretary. Among others to come out of WestExec are Avril Haines, Mr. Biden’s pick to be director of national intelligence; Christina Killingsworth, who is helping the president-elect organize his White House budget office; Ely Ratner, who is helping organize the Biden transition at the Pentagon; and Jennifer Psaki, an adviser on Mr. Biden’s transition team.

WestExec did not respond when asked for a list of its clients. But according to people familiar with the arrangement, they include Shield AI, a San Diego-based company that makes surveillance drones and signed a contract worth as much as $7.2 million with the Air Force this year to deliver artificial intelligence tools to help drones operate in combat missions.

At the same time, Mr. Blinken and Ms. Flournoy have served as advisers to Pine Island Capital, which this month raised $218 million for a new fund to finance investments in military and aerospace companies, among other targets.

Again, the ideological capture and conflict of interest is obvious.  At least there is news coverage of these facts, though Blinken was approved by a Senate vote of 78-22 and Lloyd Austin was approved 93-2.  In an era in which we are increasingly told that partisanship and polarization are at all time highs, these defense contractors got nearly unanimous approval from the Senate to run US foreign policy.  That is a manifestation of the very normalization that the media claims to guard against.

The Media's Role as an ISA

We are told by media elites to watch out for normalization, to not normalize fascism, to stand at the ready and be vigilant in guarding democracy, yet there is almost no critical dissent coming from mainstream media sources or political elites regarding whether its appropriate to have corporate board members directly controlling the levers of government power. National security concerns are a crucial component any any fascistic erosion of democracy.  Militaristic relations are by definition antagonistic because they rely on an us/them, friend/enemy distinction.  Unfortunately, there is no space to articulate this set of relationships as Political.  Instead, the media bombards us with feigning coverage of the monumental achievement of having the first black Secretary of Defense, framing it as a great rupture in our political culture.  It’s a manipulative use of diversity to promote an ideology that is distinctly Xenophobic and that channels its direct, physical force almost exclusively toward non-white populations around the world.  Of course, there will be no time for this criticism later, as national security crises are manifest and must capture our political attention.

The media, while portrayed as a mechanism of critical dissent and information, is revealed to be an ideological state apparatus, meant to normalize the capitalism, militarism, and imperialism while using crisis to deflect any critical inquiry. This media's bias is also rooted in a set of material relationships.  These are profit oriented corporations that depend on getting eyeballs on their outlets so that they can sell advertisements.  Corporate media outlets depend on finance, energy, and defense companies to buy advertisements to fund their payroll, stock options, and benefits. The economic base of their material interests compels them to create an ideological and cultural climate that caters to those interests. The results are insidous and cynical.  Opposition to Lloyd Austin can cleverly be re-packaged as upholding racism or suppressing diversity. Centering the concerns of the almost exclusively non-white populations that are the victims of US militarism is re-framed as an act of racism itself. The media works to normalize these appointments, even presenting them as social or cultural advancements for oppressed populations.  There is never a discussion about the necessity of military violence, our bloated military budgets, or any critical examination of the outsized role of the military in our society.  We are bombarded with articles obsessing over the ethics of Ivanka Trump receiving money from her father's hotel (an exceptional crisis of ethics!) while there is near-universal mainstream acqueisance to corporate board members being appointed to run government at its highest levels.

The media’s framing of crisis buys into the same framing of political and defense industry elites to reinforce and normalize the ideology of militarism.  The media obsesses over physical, direct violence around the globe.  These issues are almost never connected to the structural makeup of society. The use of crisis to focus attention and resources always rests on the assumption that prior to the crisis, in its background, there was an ongoing, normal, acceptable level of violence. That background violence is what we call structural or systemic violence.  The inequality, injustice, exploitation, or even ongoing physical violence that is routinized- think here of drone strikes- is assumed to be a normal, ‘zero point’ or acceptable manifestation of violence.

The same normalization that conflates the interests of defense companies with the national interest also works double time to ensure there is no critical examination of whether there are other, more pressing forms of violence that deserve our social and political attention.  Again, this background, unexamined space is the space of ideology.  While we are presented with supposed political calculations at the margins (how many troops?  Which countries?  Should we use direct force, or threats of violence with our allies to stabilize the region?  What kinds of weapons are ok to sell?), they are only rendered coherent after we write off the value of the billions of lives who suffer at the hands of a normalized and acceptable structural violence.  The antagonistic relationships that lie at the heart of economic, social, and cultural inequality both within and between nations are naturalized as the way things are, while the threat of physical violence toward US interests is presented as a unique form of violence that requires political and economic energy to solve it. 

Conclusion

The case for militarism-as-ideology is compelling, and this examination allows us to critically reflect on what the rhetoric of normalization seeks to conceal.  What are some of the important lessons and takeaways from this examination?  First, ideology is not based in idealism.  These concepts do not emerge from human nature; they are not inevitable products of a linear history; they are not eternal. They are rooted in a distinct set of material interests that all compound on one another.  There is a corporate defense sector that depends on militarism for its profits, while every other corporate sector arguably also depends on US intervention to enforce corporate market access. Those corporations fund an army of private lobbyists, consultants, and think tanks to engrain their message into government and media, hiding behind the twin facades of objectivity and exertise.  Media outlets, themselves corporations that have to produce profits for their survival, promote the interests of these companies in order to sell advertising.  In the process, they normalize the reproduction of militarism.

Second, these material interests are fundamnetally Political because they are based in antagonism.  There is a direct friend/enemy antagonism, wherein the survival of defense corporations depends on the production of an enemy that is fundamentally opposed to 'our way of life.'  They are also antagonistic in the sense that, by channeling the distribution of social, political, cultural, and economic resources, they are implicated in the exercise of power between competing needs and interests within the United States.

It's imperative that energy is focused on repoliticizing these relationships.  While there may be some space for dissent within mainstream media outlets, that space is insufficient in the face of a corporate apparatus that falls in line with the needs of capital.  As with any examination of ideology, the key lies in both sides of the dialectic:  the base (material) as well as the superstructure (ideological).  Rigorous criticism of mainstream discourse, spaces for reflection, and dialogue exposing the Political contours of militarism will be essential, but grossly inadequate in isolation.  This discourse must be centered on addressing the material base that generates the need for the ideological state apparatus reinforced by corporate media, lobbyists, think tanks, etc.  Power is an inescapable part of any Political change.  Cultural and media criticism must be a starting point for organized activism against militarism.  Even seemingly liberal demands- stop selling weapons to Yemen, stop bombing Libya, close Guantanomo Bay!- are ultimately facile gestures that reinforce and normalize militarism if they are not rooted in a critical examination and rationale oriented around addressing the Political antagonisms that generate our dominant understandings of violence, peace, stability, and the national interest. The daunting challenge is to refuse to articulate any demand in isolation, and instead vigorously commit to framing these challenge as part of the totality of systems operating under capitalism. Anything less will result in a continual disorientation that ultimately turns us back to dominant status quo ideology.