Here Comes the War on Terror, v 2.0

[Mr. Shaman]

[broken robot]

US now conducting air strikes in Syria. Anyone want to guess where this is going to end?

[exploited]

ISIS will be rolled back, and various Western-funded extremist groups will fill in the gaps. They'll still do horrible stuff but they won't be nearly as insensitive to the needs of our local client states.

[spacemonkey]

[broken robot]

Sounds about right, a bit like status quo ante. Could however the IS crisis in the middle east also be a reflection of the continuing disorganization of capitalism in the west? This would mean it exposes a deeper structural fault that can't be resolved as in previous conflicts when arab nationalists or islamists in the statist sense (ie. saudi arabia) prevailed, and our ability to back the "right" regimes.

Perhaps what we might be seeing then is a reconfiguration of sovereignty in the region, one oriented less to nation states but rather grounded in the power of transnational insurgent networks and their ability to govern local communities. This is already the case in Somalia, Yemen, etc.

The US might remain geopolitically and militarily dominant in the ME, North Africa, but increasingly hollowed out. it provides less of a platform for "democracy" and serves more as a continual police presence that may end up exacerbating rather than weakening these dynamics. this is evident in the shift from the labeling of the "war on terror" and its grand universal narratives of democracy to the bureaucratically benign "overseas contingency operation."

whatever it is, the end result has been a transformation in the territorial basis of capitalism with the Mid-East no longer serving as simply markets and captive resources in a traditional (neo)colonial sense, but rather its becoming yet another symptom of the inherent decay in the political systems of the West as a result of financial crisis, deindustrialization, de-legitimization of democratic political processes, expansion of technocratic institutions (European Central Bank, etc.) and so on.

Only real way I can see us actually ending the IS conflict then is to address the democratic deficit in the west, particularly the fact that legal institutions and policies no longer reflect an engaged public but remain the purview of a narrow group of policy makers and elites increasingly devoid of any broader ideological-popular framework. this again can be seen by the fact that obama hasn't gone to congress for the current conflict but is relying on the outdated purview of war on terror exectuive commands to fight against "al qaeda" threats.

In contrast to the current approach, we should consider the deeper implications of the energy industry for our democracy (take for example Timothy Mitchell's work on "carbon democracy"), particularly relations between oil and finance. moreover this affects our geopolitical relationship with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states and the M-E proxy war with Iran.

Maybe then we could think about ways in which energy, new technologies, etc. in fact have both internal and external political implications, beyond seemingly narrow policy choices such as whether or not to bomb IS and with which coalition partners. again, why does the american public seem so detached from the current crisis, in contrast to the seeming expansion of nationalist fervor right after 9/11. why in a sense are we exhausted, and what's the deeper issue?

i don't think the answer to the question can't be found within the region itself, which is seeing the emergence of new forms of political sovereignty. rather i'd argue that we must address the current menu of political options in the western countries that is based on an increasingly disorganized political system and facing multiple economic, energy, and environmental crises.

maybe it's time then for another social movement that can articulate these as demands of a new kind of citizenship that depends on active engagement based on issues that actually energize people and address community concerns. i'm thinking here of the emergence of new urban spaces in detroit in the aftermath of the city's bankruptcy, particularly the attempt to reintroduce an agrarian frontier within its municipal limits through people buying up abandoned lots. also considering self-help schemes and issues of homeowner debt like the rolling jubilee.

such a social movement might recapture the spirit and ethos of anarchism from the early 20th century combined in the US at least with tocquevillian traditions of local democracy in order to re-invigorate and reconsider the narrative of american democracy. the earlier phase was one of major global upheaval and systemic change based on the enduring crises of capitalism, so maybe we can draw lessons from the period leading right up to WWI and major conflict among imperialist powers in order to reflect on the present.

I'm really BSing here but this forum's a bit dead right now.

[broken robot]

[The Dharma Bum]

[broken robot]

[broken robot]

[eynon81]