Austin Morgan
Amorga14@uwyo.edu
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Chairman Mao understood the fundamental rule of his time—that political power had to be won through force. However, Mao failed to predict the most radical inversion of this formulation of power: the gun retired for the drone, power traded for violence and, our most radical horizon, violence’s evolution into terror. The entrance of the drone into the military lexicon is the end of political power and the beginning of horrific, unrestrained violence.
We live in a time when drones are slowly replacing human fighters. Recently, General Robert Cone, head of the army’s training command, considered reducing the army’s brigade combat teams by 1000 soldiers and replacing them with drones, according to U.S. military magazine “Defense News.”
At first, this decision to scale back our troops seems purely strategic, the intention being to save American lives. Who cares, after all, if ISIS destroys a machine? We can always build a new one. This justification, however, is a deadly one.
When the threat of lost life is no longer a deterrent to go to war—for the American public or the U.S. government—war becomes sinfully simple. When our shovels no longer reside in the graveyards, when masses of our soldiers’ bodies no longer appear in our media and when politicians can escape the political consequences of a disingenuous condolence letter—well then, we have not only made war easier; we have stamped it with inevitability.
“With nothing to lose but machines,” writes cultural critic Joseph Pugliese, “the U.S. is now in a position to wage war without the usual weighing up of the human cost.” The drone campaign has made war endless, tragedy infinite and political accountability into a shibboleth.
Surprisingly, this drastic reconsideration of how politics is to be done fits neatly into our troubled historic narrative. After all, we have already come far on the path to war without politics. For instance, the U.S. has not officially declared war since 1942. We know, however, that we have been engaged in multiple conflicts since. The congressional check on war powers has evaporated.
Furthermore, there are commentators which speculate that Syria will be the site of a proxy war between Russia and the U.S. If this occurs, it will definitely not be officially recognized and its proceedings will take place in secret, under the guise of humanitarian military aid. In the face of this near-absence of the political, we now possess a technology which removes the last surviving political barrier to war: political sanction through public support.
Furthermore, what of the capitalist warmongers? Traditionally, capitalist wars, like capitalism itself, were bound by the will of the masses; capitalism made pressing concessions to recruit the poor to fight its wars. Drones have lifted this prohibition. The arrival of drones means that the wealthy no longer require the obedience of the proletariat to oversee their imperial projects.
The hoax of “capitalism with a human face”—a capitalism which attempts to direct production at solving social problems—will no longer serve a purpose. If the oppressive hierarchy no longer has to bend to placate the masses, then all humanitarian goals are forfeit: only the smooth functioning of the system itself is privileged.
As cultural critic Slavoj Žižek said, “if you disregard all humanitarian problems and look only at what would be ideal for the functioning of the system, basically the idea is that sooner or later 80% of the people are disposable—of no use.” Žižek makes clear the callous indifference of pure capitalism, which, in designating the majority of the global population as ancillary to the means of production, consigns most of the world to the periphery of ethical consideration: they become human garbage.
By using drones, the U.S. abandons the democratic checks on state aggression. Ceding the political will have drastic consequences on what “total war” actually means. As philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, “when power abdicates, all that remains is the potential for violence.” I go one step further: the complete abolition of political power can only result in terror. And terror, as we know, is uncontrollable.
