Privatizing Death: on the new paradigms of war

In our consumerist and post-capitalist world it is easy to see violence becoming a service provided by private companies and no longer part of the public sector only (think about the monopoly on violence as described by Max Webber in Politics as a Vocation). War had become a commodity for quite a while now. This issue has been widely discussed by scholars and journalists alike, tracing its roots in the history of modernity and often seeing it as an outcome of the revolution in military industry in the 19^th and 20^th century. War is an investment; it provides new markets not only for military goods, but also for re-construction services. Moreover, it can be argued that a war, if well fought, can also provide domination and further resources that can in turn expand the industry and the market. These paradigms are connected to modernity and have been widely acknowledged by modern thinkers as early as Machiavelli. War in these terms concerns the economical sector of industry and the trade of physical goods.

The paradigm shift occurs in the post-colonial age. Post-colonialism refers to the end of the paradigm of European domination over what will come to be known as the third world. The end of this era and its specific strategies of representation and control of the other brought forth another dominant power rather than the empowerment of the other. The bourgeoning power had to replace the dying discourse of European colonialism. It must be noted however that the “educational” or “civilizing” aspect of French colonialism is lately being reformulated by the American model of imperial domination using the term “democratization” or “liberation”. This new paradigm of imperialism was in part a product of a new mode of global economical relations. The era of thought and politics that came to be known as postmodern, can be seen as denoting some of these new economical dimensions of the world and the representation of reality. Non-Physical goods dominate over modernity’s industrial goods; Marx’s commodities take a whole new dimension. It is useful to recall the objet-petit-a that Lacan talks about as that unnamable aspect of the thing that triggers desire, this illusory excess in the object or the other that transforms it into an object of desire and gives it a value beyond its useless appearance – objet-petit-a is what is left of the Real after the transition to the Symbolic; objet petit a is a surplus meaning, a surplus of jouissance; it is the object of desire which we seek in the other. In the postmodern age the desire often looses its object and becomes itself the object of its own desire.

The translation of these terms in the specific case of postmodern colonial wars and the shift from the paradigms of European colonialism is simple. While during the age of colonialism war was an industrial goods that was still within the State’s monopoly on the violence exercised outside of its territory (and certainly within it), during the current colonial paradigm war is no longer an industrial goods, rather it is a commodity, it is no longer an item (military products) but a service. This transition reflects the economical transition from economies based on industry to economies based on services. Iraq provides a relevant example. The war investment in Iraq concerns at least four layers of economical interest: 1. The military industry’s trade of military goods 2. The contractors investments in reconstruction 3. The oil supply and control over strategic geographical outposts and 4. The private security companies providing their protection services to those in charge of the three other layers of interest. The role of private security companies is to protect strategic and vital structures and among others the United States Embassy in Baghdad.

These companies provide one thing: services. The service in this case is killing, or in better marketing terms, protection. The exercise of violence is no longer solely related to the State’s monopoly over it (the army) but is, like all the other sectors of economy, privatized. Among the news from Iraq was an “incident” which will never be called “terrorist” when the Blackwater private security company in charge of the protection of the United States Embassy in Baghdad opened fire on civilians and killed a debatable number of them. The sanction was a threat by the Iraqi government to revoke the company’s license. This license in crude terms is simply a license to kill.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/09/17/iraq.main/index.html

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/checkpointbaghdad/archive/2007/09/17/are-contractors-above-the-law.aspx