A few thoughts on weaponry and struggle...
Galbraith is known best for his economic views, but his World War II studies that highlighted the ineffectiveness of strategic bombing became as much the "common sense" left over from his work as any other of his economic writing. Vietnam just served to reinforce the lesson, seemingly for all time.
But in the wake of the Gulf War, Kosovo and Afghanistan, that common sense has to be unlearned - probably not completely but in large areas of our collective unconscious thinking.
Modern weaponry backed by the money for sophisticated technology is a devastating weapon of war, allowing a great power like the US to conquer physical space without risking the death of hardly any of its own people in war, especially when it can use proxies to "mop up" after the bombing has done its work. That such bombing can be done in ways that significantly reduce opposition casualties just reinforces the political legitimacy for use of such weaponry.
What flows from this is unclear in every instance, but an antiwar movement built around "body bag" numbers - either ours or "theirs" - will fall largely flat. It also makes the romance of military-based antiimperial war a nostalgic item of mid-20th century history, not a likely viable option for the next century.
"Progressive nationalism" is pretty much history, since viable nationalism outside large power interests will likely not survive outside the shelter of such weaponry. A return to large power conflict may open up global political space for small acts of independence, but only so long as they don't threaten large power interests.
Now, this basic rule of the power of air bombing only goes so far, since a state with a less reprehensible government than the Taliban would not fall so fast since there would be fewer proxies available to assume power easily on the ground. The US otherwise would have had to do its own work on the ground with greater cost and politically holding such a state might be nonviable over the longer term.
But that is the longer term issue of political control that festers in war and peace-- the issue is what to make of the clear change in the nature of the power of air bombing in the modern era. On that issue, the game seems to have changed quite radically during the last decade.
-- Nathan Newman -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20011130/c9c42aa8/attachment.htm>