Introduction
The title is deliberate,
reasonable and timely. The last decade has brought a new dimension to state
sponsored violence as effective non-state sponsored purveyors of violence
continue to decline. This is in part due to the demise of USSR in 1991 and
associated collapse of ideological divide. If imagination is stretched to its
limits it becomes apparent that violence of various forms is mostly sponsored
by states directly or by proxy. With this picture, this article attempts a partial
treatment through uncomfortable dalliance with ‘critical’ geopolitics in
presenting the complexity of recent investment in state sponsored industrial violence
around the world, the main requirements and various forms of competing justification
descriptions (not narratives) in English (language).
‘Critical’ Geopolitics
The beauty of geography is that
everything dabbles into it, like a form of intellectual prostitute. In the case
of ‘critical’ geopolitics, it can be reduced to geopolitics without maps, a
geopolitics without geography except for text and descriptors associated with
locations and areas. The core of ‘critical’ geopolitics revolves around
pathological repulsion of geographical core elements; scale, distance,
distance, bearing and topography hence the intellectual allergy of maps and
geography indeed. Within its fort of textual and discourse analysis, the
objective of the article reconciles its essence to capture various dimension of
conflicts and industrial violence in select urban spaces in Africa, Arab world
and parts of south Asia.
New state-sponsored Industrial
Violence Requirement
All conflicts are problems and
all problems are projects and all projects have requirements for successful
execution and solution. Napoleon Bonaparte was one the first generals who clearly
articulated the role of finance or money as pre-requisite for successful prosecution
of war. Despite the fact this position is that of a nation-state, the template
is the same for liberation movements seeking self-determination, proxy groups
seeking nebulous dividends and isolated group running for impervious
expectations. It is on this note that conflict on industrial scale is surely a
profit making venture requiring huge financing and bottomless lines of credit.
Napoleon wasn’t the first to realise this as many successful and unsuccessful
generals in antiquity expressed such awareness in their various campaigns.
Money among other requirements is
no longer sufficient. Operating war machines on war path not only require
support of nation-state citizens/residents but the war campaign must be imposed
on them with noisy justifications of armchair ‘expert’ and inconclusive and
uncoordinated reports of embedded & biased ‘reporters’. Having the media on
side is now an inevitable part of a successful war machine to enable the
imposer and impunity-purveyor win not just on the imposed battlefield but
equally in the court of public opinion for ‘hearts’ and ‘minds'.
The media machine allows war
makers (surely the global power elite) and industrial violence purveyors to
commodify murder and industrial killings. Where morality is relativized and
determined in a deliberate restrictive definition by the powerful, war and
murders are turned into products cheaply accessed and obtained on any
communication platform. This initially nauseating product dominates cable
networks, newspapers and Internet. Unsurprisingly the repetition of the tired
war ‘winning’ questionable narrative transforms the listener or viewer into a
norm, careless and disinteresting mind whose consciousness on morality is
murdered by a murder product imposed on the airwaves.
These individuals
unconsciously de-appropriate their rights of care, repudiate their right of
investigation and at times give up their gift of critical analysis simply
because on the surface the war theatre is far away from home. This state of mind may not change when one of
their own, a warrior ‘doing the job he/she loves’ is returned lifeless in a
body bag. At this point critical thinking and basic analysis is eliminated by
self-delusion and deliberate carelessness in part because the source of
livelihood is not dented or seriously challenged.
Competing Justification
Descriptions
War is not just an assault on
human beings but more so a rape of their heritage, their essence, their
ontology and on the earth. Violence purveyors have attempted to arrogate the
powers of the impossible towards playing the complex game of ambiguity in their
unquenchable belief in weapons precision, specificity of design and sophistication.
Hence the use of words like ‘guided’, ‘precision’, and ‘surgical’ to justify
lunatic abstraction from reality that weapon cannot be offensive and protective
at the same time.
None of the weapons given above-mentioned prefixes or
adjectives have killed less people in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Rather it maximises the indignity of taking human lives through caustic
celebration of dehumanisation and degradation whose dignity is disturbingly
reduced to the level of ‘collateral damage’. Even to the point that surviving victims
are placed in a binary confusion of simultaneously confirming death of a loved
one but no longer possess part of his/her humanity for burial.
As the world navigates through
the last 2 decades with various unjust wars and unnecessary conflicts of
madness, advanced weapons and sophisticated devices have being deployed in
nothing short of barbarism and atrocities. Whether the powers that be
acknowledge them or not is immaterial. 2011 Libyan (Africa) invasion by North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) under the direction of another African from
afar only displayed unending barbarism, horror, atrocities and abominations in
full glare of ubiquitous 24 hours media lens until other violence interests
redirect them to new theatres. Libya is currently a real-time outcome of NATO
barbarism, atrocities and abomination in their war planes, drones and
foot-soldiers. Sadly Libya has not survived. Gaza is trying to.
The last few weeks have brought
forward wider awareness of a stage on proxy outfit metamorphosis. Of course the
metamorphosis has many stages to go as is the case with well-oiled and well
strategized proxies. Their existence and operation is the only strategy in town
for the violator-in-chief. (Northern) Nation-states
now exist only to make war, it is their raison
d’être!
Posted images and motions of
beheadings have been termed ‘barbaric’, ‘atrocious’ and ‘inhuman’ by the usual
suspects. Yes, 24 hour media lens has become the leveller of different modes of
murders for the same global population but carefully select audience(s). Even
the bandwagon of illusory bunch of misplaced victims whose origins are the same
war theatres and inappropriately labelled ‘moderates’ joined the chorus
probably for self-preservation. In the absence of moral comparison talk less of
justification of heinous methods of murder (by a knife or by F-15 or by
Hellfire drone), no one or government can appropriate the right or power of event
description or reallocation of meanings of violence expecting everyone in the
English speaking world to follow slavishly.
Conclusion
Evidently these barbaric methods
of murder on industrial scale mentioned above are globally geography neutral
hence the fitting label of such analysis within ‘critical’ geopolitics. Of
course local (regional) bias exist, anyone can be attacked anywhere. What is
actually present but dismissed is that smaller proxy metamorphosis run parallel
to regressive metamorphoses of the sponsors. It exhibits insecurity about the
future which is best left like a sacred cow.
Future is a black box and only
reinforcement of past glories and biased acknowledgement or attacks of
unstoppable positive changes of other global players suffices. However the erstwhile
foundation upon which the hubristic firmaments generating the disconnected
conclusions have withered. It matters little what terms are associated with
murder or by who made the association or to whom they is made for. Contextual
implications of investment in violence and industrial killings may be
multi-dimensional but its intergenerational component is immutable.
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