josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Al-Qaeda's Islamism is significant... a global network needs a global ideology. Could there be a secular global terrorist network? I'm not sure...

And then again, there is the idea of the multitude... the dream of a global anti-capitalist resistance movement. It is interesting to think about whether or not this is possible...
 

vimothy

yurp
Yes. It is actually a kind of post-Islamism (cf. Kepel), because it is international in focus and nature, not national. And of course, "closer to Marx than the Koran" (Roy). But I do not think that the proposed caliphate state is necessarily anti-capitalist; rather, it is a type of constitutional order equivalent to the US (i.e., a nascent market state).
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
Al-Qaeda is nominally anti-capitalist - at least, they make statements to this effect. However the term "capitalism" is highly overdetermined in their discourse, as it is also in others, standing as a malleable synecdoche for more intimate enemies (the 'nuum, my own deep-rooted insecurity, etc)...

It is interesting to consider whether States (or nominally anti-State secular movements) will begin (are beginning) to upgrade their own image-factories with some of these ideological/mimetic weapons. Processes of Al-Qaedaization, in philosophy, in politics...
 

vimothy

yurp
Nominal anti-capitalism, perhaps in some respects. There are streams that feed into AQ that are anti-capitalist, and AQ is in many ways an extension of western leftist radicalism. And certainly "capitalism" is highly over-determined, at this point. But AQ's goal is establishing a transnational state with Sharia law, a network of fiefdoms swearing loyalty to the caliphate. I don't think they have any particular desires at governance beyond that.
 

josef k.

Dangerous Mystagogue
However, this goal is only marginally more realistic than it would be if you and I were pursuing this same plan.
 

scottdisco

rip this joint please
However, this goal is only marginally more realistic than it would be if you and I were pursuing this same plan.

true though of course radical Islamists are responsible for much misery, pain and death in many places

(my apologies btw Josef if this stunning insight from moi looks a bit like i've inferred you wouldn't care to acknowledge such a thing. my bad.)
 
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vimothy

yurp
However, this goal is only marginally more realistic than it would be if you and I were pursuing this same plan.

I'm not sure about this. I don't think its too hard to imagine AQ uniting some ungovernable spaces under a caliphate ("caliphate", if you prefer), or even some states. In a sense, this has already happened.

And re AQ's anti-capitalism, I think the word I was searching for in response was "illiberal". Certainly, they are not free-trade libertarians, but I see their chief focus as politico-legal (as well, obviously, as strategic).
 
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vimothy

yurp
Also want to mention, in the context of this thread, Mary Kaldor, whose work is pretty germane to the themes we're discussing. For instance, this:

First of all, what does Professor Walt mean when he says that America is the “most powerful nation on earth”? In military terms, it is true that the United States outspends any other country—indeed, it spends ten times more than the next highest spender. But does that military spending translate into military power? To be sure, the United States possesses very sophisticated technology and can attack targets more or less precisely at very long distances. But that is not the same as what Schelling famously called “compellance.” Despite its apparently extensive military resources, it cannot control either Afghanistan or Iraq—two relatively minor “powers” (to use Professor Walt’s terms). So what does it mean to say that the United States is militarily powerful? Perhaps it means, and this is true, that the United States has the same difficulties as other countries. Russia cannot control Chechnya. Israel cannot control the Palestinian territories. India cannot control Kashmir. Military power has become immensely destructive, and, at the same time, global sensibilities about deliberate destruction increasingly inhibit the use of force. Moreover, the spread of easily available lethal, accurate, and easy-to-use conventional weapons has greatly reduced the comparative advantages of sophisticated military technology.

In other words, military forces are much less useable than in earlier eras, and this represents a profound change in global power relations. If we still believe that military power is significant, and as Professor Walt points out, both America’s friends and foes do still believe this, it is only because of the legacy of past victories, especially during World War II. But every time military power is used, that belief gets eroded.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
AQ is in many ways an extension of western leftist radicalism

Do you really think so? Or do you think that western leftists sort of fetishize the badassitude of terrorists who aren't afraid to do something about what they believe after the fact?
 

vimothy

yurp
I think that is probably true as well. I'm not claiming that AQ takes its inspiration from the political doctrines of 20th century leftist radicalism. Rather, there are formal, functional and modal symmetries, as well as historical continuities. And as Olivier Roy notes, "there has almost never been an example in Muslim history to parallel today's terrorist acts. When Bernard Lewis tried to link present-day terrorism to the Ismaili-Hashshashin paradigm, he proved precisely the opposite: the extraordinary Hasshashin (Assassin) saga is an exception in Muslim history, an isolated and weird episode born out of a marginal heresy."

(BTW, that quote is from a chapter in Globalized Islam called, "Is jihad closer to Marx than to the Koran?" It lays out this argument in a very clear fashion. If you have access to a good library, it's definitely worth a ten minute read.)
 

vimothy

yurp
Smith, "The Utility of Force",

f one is operating amongst the people, and the object is to achieve and maintain a situation of order in which political and economic measures are to take hold, then by implication one is seeking to establish some form of the rule of law. Indeed, this may be described as a strategic objective--which means that to operate tactically outside the rule of law is to attack one's own doctrine. This is effectively what happened with incidents of abuse by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison or Baghdad or British soldiers in Basra in 2004--or of course the US administered camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba..."


Speaks very powerfully to the convergence of law and strategy in the modern era.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
it's a misnomer of course but re: The War On Drugs, this is madness:

drug cartels building their own fleets of rudimentary submarines to smuggle cocaine

~$1 mil/per to knock up a no frills mini-sub that can haul several tons of cocaine 3000 miles from Colombia to the U.S. nearly impossible to detect. also re; the coming Robot Wars they're also, apparently, experimenting with remote-controlled drone subs. not to get all right-wing talk radio crazy but surely the implications for terrorism - as one USN dude puts it in the article "you don't want to see one of these coming up the Hudson".

also, this great cache of papers on Southern Iraq going back to 2004, which I've been working my thru slowly but steadily;

Basra & Southern Iraq Analysis
 

vimothy

yurp
if the (primary) policy objective your strategy is aimed at is establishing rule of law - de facto or official.

I think that we're going to see this more and more in the future.

And Bobbit notes that strategy and law are already very close. Strategy: protecting ourselves from others. Law: protecting ourselves from ourselves.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I think that we're going to see this more and more in the future.

this is almost certainly true. what is crucially important is who's law is to be enforced & who it will be enforced on.

And Bobbit notes that strategy and law are already very close. Strategy: protecting ourselves from others. Law: protecting ourselves from ourselves.

I would also define Law as protecting us from others. tho really it depends on whether you're one of those being protected or not.
 

vimothy

yurp
And of course, Charles Tilly: "War makes the state and the state makes war".

The issue of whether it is possible to go from directly from a state of dis-functionality sufficient to provoke an intervention to a state of consent is, as you suggest, important.
 
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