Democratization of War (Brussels Morning)
Channel: Sam Vaknin's Musings
Date: 2024-01-18

Column here: https://brusselsmorning.com/the-democratization-of-war/36695/

WATCH Pornography of War (with Scott Jacobsen) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI-y2hCLS-s

Like all other forms of technology, war technology is being privatized and democratized. Ever since the 1950s, individuals have been challenging the state’s monopoly on violence in an organized, structured way by forming militias (“terrorist organizations” aka “freedom fighters”). 

Mercenary PMC (Private Military Companies) such as the Wagner Group now augment or even substitute for standing armies.

Weapons have been miniaturized and rendered more affordable. The latest example is the kamikaze drone, manufactured by nearly 30 countries around the globe, most notably in Iran. Missiles of all varieties, even ballistic ones, are in the hands of paramilitary formations.

Warfare, especially of the urban kind, has been taken underground, into indestructible tangled networks of tunnels. Cyberspace affords another battlefield of distributed belligerence. 

Nation-states now habitually team up with a new variant of proxy clients: nonstate operators in theatres of asymmetrical warfare. 

These developments have radically transformed the very nature of war. Social media, smartphone cameras, streaming services, and television have brought the battlefield into our living rooms in live color.

As usual, in the sated West, we keep getting warfare in the developing world all wrong. 

Similarly, other lessons about the North-South divide we overlook: 
The West has institutionalized corruption (aka lobbying) and now preaches to the developing world about nepotism, cronyism, and venality. 

Technology should never be the end - only the means to an end. 

The indigenous population knows the best solutions to its problems. We need to listen rather than preach, hector, and dictate. 

But, most importantly: 

Education is only one path to social mobility. In other societies, reputation and social networking matter much more. In many territories in the third world, terrorism and war are the only viable vocations.

Terror organizations can be eradicated only when they do not enjoy popular support and when they engage mostly in self-enrichment via crime (examples: al-Qaida, ISIS, narco-terrorists in south America). In all other cases, faced with resolute attrition by state actors, terror groups convert into political parties (see Hezbollah, IRA, ETA, Sandinistas, etc.)