[WSMDiscuss] No end in sight (Andrew Preston)

[Jai Sen]

Monday, June 15, 2020

Viruses in movement…, The US in movement…, Resistance in movement…, Empire in movement…, Ideas in movement…

[The US is aflame, its people are afire…  but there is also something profoundly depressing, and frightening, to see what ‘they’ (and therefore all of us, anywhere and everywhere in the world) are up against : The grossly distorted, inflated, deformed, body called ‘the state’; not just the police, but the US state as a whole, and the capitalists and capitalism that have captured it and have made it and themselves the mad machine that that it today is and they today are; which is today out of control, a robot working on algorithms that are seemingly beyond human control, at this point in time… and where ‘the police’ as they are now are just one incarnation of this all-consuming madness :

… the militarization of U.S. national security has been mirrored by the militarization of U.S. domestic security. Police forces in the United States have come to resemble their military forces in ways that are corroding the republic from within.

……

The film holds up well – depressingly so – though there are some aspects that have become dated. Most noticeably, in the Brooklyn of Do the Right Thing, the police don’t seem to carry guns, and they definitely don’t brandish military-style assault weapons and ride around in armoured vehicles. The movie was released three decades back, but in this sense it might as well have been from a century long ago….

According to the Law Enforcement Support Office, more than US$7.4-billion of property has been transferred to more than 8,000 police agencies since the program’s inception, and while that number includes the costs of standard-issue hand-me-downs such as clothes and office supplies, it also includes the kind of equipment that make police resemble elite paramilitary units on U.S. city streets, as we’ve seen in full force in recent weeks.

…. the militarization of American security has actually created what it was supposed to end: insecurity and anxiety.

…. Yet by now, it should be all too clear that Americans can’t simply fight their way out of this crisis.

[In short, the only way out – and past this stage of history - is developing a vision much bigger than fighting… :

No end in sight

The militarization of US police forces is the result of the superpower’s perpetual and decades-long state of war in the name of national security

Andrew Preston

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-fight-with-power-in-battlespace-america-there-is-always-war-to-be/ <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-fight-with-power-in-battlespace-america-there-is-always-war-to-be/>
 

Andrew Preston is a professor of American history at the University of Cambridge whose books include Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith : Religion in American War and Diplomacy.


Members of the National Guard and Seattle police, outfitted with gas masks and riot shields, stand behind a barrier during a Seattle protest on June 3, 2020.   (LINDSEY WASSON/Reuters)



Like many families I know, mine has been riveted by the unrest gripping the United States. With the issues so important, the images so disturbing, and the national response so inspirational, we’ve been watching and talking about little else. That’s extended to our choice of movies, and the other night we watched Spike Lee’s 1989 classic Do the Right Thing.

The movie explores racial tensions through the lens of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood, and the police are recurring figures. At the end, one of the main characters, Radio Raheem, is choked to death by an officer. The manner of his killing is slightly different, but the scene is all too reminiscent of what happened to George Floyd.

The film holds up well – depressingly so – though there are some aspects that have become dated. Most noticeably, in the Brooklyn of Do the Right Thing, the police don’t seem to carry guns, and they definitely don’t brandish military-style assault weapons and ride around in armoured vehicles. The movie was released three decades back, but in this sense it might as well have been from a century long ago.

In the years since, the U.S.'s local police forces have become thoroughly militarized. They still function as local police always have, but they’ve been supplemented with what can only be called special forces, the likes of which are normally found in war zones. This is because the U.S. itself has been in a state of permanent war since Do the Right Thing was released – not total war of the kind we associate with the Second World War, but smaller “forever wars” in which the U.S. is almost always engaged in military conflict somewhere in the world.



A police officer holds a weapon during a demonstration in Portland, Ore., on May 31, 2020.  (TERRAY SYLVESTER/Reuters)

After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. lacked a rival to keep it in check. Without such constraints, military intervention often became the first option for U.S. foreign policy, not the last resort. The purported objective of these wars was to enhance “national security,” but the extent to which they actually made the U.S. more secure is doubtful. It’s more likely that conflict has only stoked further conflict, trapping the U.S. in a cycle of continuous warfare from which it has become difficult to escape. U.S. President Donald Trump’s fitful efforts to disengage from Syria and Afghanistan are just two cases in point.

Not coincidentally, the militarization of U.S. national security has been mirrored by the militarization of U.S. domestic security. Police forces in the United States have come to resemble their military forces in ways that are corroding the republic from within.


A law-enforcement officer holds a weapon during peaceful protests on June 3, 2020, in Washington.  (Alex Wong/Getty Images)



Those links are even imprinted on the equipment itself. The end of the Cold War brought a small peace dividend, and in the 1990s the defence budget began coming down from its highs of the Reagan buildup the previous decade. This meant that the Pentagon had unneeded equipment on its hands at the same time it needed to make savings. The solution, now known as the 1033 Program, was to sell surplus military hardware to law enforcement in the United States. Supply met demand, as police departments increased in size and reach in response to soaring crime rates from the 1970s to the 1990s. Police budgets rose even further after 9/11.

For a time, the program was fairly modest. But after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, prompting the Pentagon budget to more than double in absolute terms in the decade after 9/11, the 1033 Program enjoyed boom times, too. While it’s not easy to repurpose a B-2 Stealth Bomber for policing the streets of a city such as Chicago or Dallas, the kind of high-powered small arms and armoured vehicles that were required for the wars in the Middle East are a different story.

According to the Law Enforcement Support Office, more than US$7.4-billion of property has been transferred to more than 8,000 police agencies since the program’s inception, and while that number includes the costs of standard-issue hand-me-downs such as clothes and office supplies, it also includes the kind of equipment that make police resemble elite paramilitary units on U.S. city streets, as we’ve seen in full force in recent weeks.

Guns and armoured vehicles weren’t the only things police departments were importing from foreign war zones. The forever wars also created a new generation of military veterans, and after serving in the urban warfare of Afghanistan and Iraq, many of them found employment in police departments back home.

A Marshall Project/USA Today investigation in 2017 estimated that “one in five police officers are literally warriors, returned from Afghanistan, Iraq or other assignments.” These warriors brought with them a familiarity with military-grade weapons, but they also brought with them unhappy memories, and sometimes post-traumatic stress, from patrolling the hostile streets of Kabul and Baghdad.
These ex-soldiers and marines have also reimported their knowledge of tactics and operations back into the U.S. As revealed by Stuart Schrader, a historian who is the leading authority on the subject, changes in counterinsurgency doctrine have spurred changes in how domestic policing is done.

Scarred by defeat in Vietnam, in which a conventional strategy of massive aerial bombing and “search-and-destroy” operations on the ground was useless against low-tech guerrilla fighters, military reformers literally rewrote the rules on counterinsurgency. The disastrous occupation of Iraq then gave the reformers their chance. Their efforts culminated in Field Manual 3-24, better known as Counterinsurgency, which General David Petraeus shepherded into print in December, 2006, right when he was about to take command of a new mission in Iraq.

Gen. Petraeus’s mission was to oversee the Surge, an influx of 30,000 U.S. troops into Iraq. But his mission was also to use his troops differently – to have more boots walking the streets of Iraqi towns and cities and less use of indiscriminate firepower. Soldiers effectively began acting as beat officers, mingling with the Iraqi people and providing a semblance of everyday security as best they could. The goal was to stop U.S. forces from intimidating the locals and build trust between them, thereby starving the insurgency of oxygen.


Stun grenades hang from the uniform of a police officer in Washington on June 3, 2020.  (Alex Wong/Getty Images)


Over exactly the same period, U.S. law enforcement underwent a parallel development. Just as the War on Terror caused a change in American war fighting, the War on Crime caused similar changes to American policing.

Under the “broken windows” and “stop and frisk” theories that were developed in the 1980s and 1990s, local police resumed walking the streets and enforcing the law against small crimes and suspicious individuals. Then came warfare in the Middle East and the 1033 Program, which brought weapons, vehicles and people back to the U.S. to put these new tactics to work in both police and drug enforcement on both sides of the southern border, where counterinsurgency tactics first used in Vietnam and later in Afghanistan and Iraq have been brought back to fight cartels.

That means that today, both at home and abroad, the U.S. is shouldering the heavy burden of parallel wars without end. Whether it’s measured in lives lost or broken, in a loss of national and international legitimacy, or in the loss of massive amounts of money wasted on a vast prison network at home and futile wars overseas, the militarization of American security has actually created what it was supposed to end: insecurity and anxiety.

It is as fitting as it is worrying, then, that Defence Secretary Mark Esper referred to U.S. cities as a “battlespace” last week, when calling on governors to intervene in civil unrest. Yet by now, it should be all too clear that Americans can’t simply fight their way out of this crisis.


Seattle police form a line after deploying pepper spray and flashbangs against protesters on May 31, 2020.  (Lindsey Wasson/Reuters)



____________________________

Jai Sen

Independent researcher, editor; Senior Fellow at the School of International Development and Globalisation Studies at the University of Ottawa

jai.sen at cacim.net <mailto:jai.sen at cacim.net>
Now based in New Delhi, India (+91-98189 11325) and in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded and unsurrendered Anishinaabe territory (+1-613-282 2900) 

CURRENT / RECENT publications :

Jai Sen, ed, 2018a – The Movements of Movements, Part 2 : Rethinking Our Dance. Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press <http://www.pmpress.org/>
Jai Sen, ed, 2018b – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ? (Indian edition). New Delhi : AuthorsUpfront, in collaboration with OpenWord and PM Press.  Hard copy available at MOM1AmazonIN <https://www.amazon.in/dp/9387280101/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1522884070&sr=8-2&keywords=movements+of+movements+jai+sen>, MOM1Flipkart <https://www.flipkart.com/the-movements-of-movements/p/itmf3zg7h79ecpgj?pid=9789387280106&lid=LSTBOK9789387280106NBA1CH&marketplace=FLIPKART&srno=s_1_1&otracker=search&fm=SEARCH&iid=ff35b702-e6a8-4423-b014-16c84f6f0092.9789387280106.SEARCH&ppt=Search%20Page>, and MOM1AUpFront <http://www.authorsupfront.com/movements.htm>
Jai Sen, ed, 2017 – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ?.  New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press.  Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press <http://www.pmpress.org/>
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