{"id":34,"date":"2005-08-10T12:57:53","date_gmt":"2005-08-10T16:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/2005\/08\/10\/terror\/"},"modified":"2005-08-10T12:57:53","modified_gmt":"2005-08-10T16:57:53","slug":"terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/2005\/08\/10\/terror\/","title":{"rendered":"Terror"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

August is the birth month of four of my six children.<\/P>
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It is also when most of us in the human race observe the anniversary of the nuclear holocaust in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and  Nagasaki<\/A>, the first and only time such new and terrifying weapons were deliberately unleashed upon a largely civilian population.   Its denouement <\/EM>was hardly more edifying.   Possessing a monopoly of such weaponry emboldened Truman<\/A> to commit mass murder, while opening a Pandora’s box of instant generalized annihilation.<\/P>
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All this to scare Stalin<\/A> and grab the crumbling empires of Europe and Japan.<\/P>
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It worked, but not in quite the way Truman and his colleagues envisaged.   The Soviet Union redoubled its efforts to match America, missle for missle, and the arms race was on<\/A>.   But, no matter who was to later claim “victory” in this devilish affair, the course set in motion by the Americans in 1945 has continued apace and in ways that neither side could have reasonably forseen.<\/P>
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Today, of course, weapons of mass destruction have been “democratized” to such an extent that virtually any individual or group of individuals can possess and use them with as much abandon and deadly effect as sovereign states.    Tom Friedman<\/A> once remarked that eight people, each carrying a nuclear bomb in a briefcase the size of the ordinary laptop, could obliterate Israel in seconds. <\/P>
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And such a scenario<\/EM> would merely be the inaugaral act in a drama that promises to change forever not only relations between obsolete or failing states, but the very nature of war and peace itself.   <\/P>
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The potential devastating efficiency of  new and portable weapons serves to create an “equillibrium of terror” that achieves a sort of parity between enemies<\/A>, almost regardless of their respective size and resources.<\/P>
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Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the non-state actor carry two contradictory implications.   On the one hand, the introduction of new technologies enable even the meanest slave to turn definitively on his tormenter and achieve a reckoning unattainable in other forums.   <\/P>
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On the other, the prospect of impending national annihilation provides an opportunity for even fading regimes to rally popular support.    <\/P>
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Thus, that which immediately threatens the safety and well-being of the state can, over the long haul, insure its survival.    Yet, the effectiveness of the state as guardian and promoter of national capitalist interests is compromised by the increased mobility and firepower of its non-state adversary.<\/P>
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Such a paradox<\/A> is at the heart of the current revival of the nation-state.   Once thought to be an anachronism, the idea of the strong national government has been invigorated by the war on terror.   Talk of international corporate entities increasingly assuming the functions and legitimacy of parliaments–once all the go in the halls of think-tanks and in the editorial pages of the capitalist press–has been completely eclipsed.    Gone, too, is the notion of the gradual disappearance of the state–the “withering away”which was at the core of the ideologies of Adam Smith and Karl Marx–rendered superfluous by new and revolutionary contexts in which human nature would develop and flourish in a new world free of government.<\/P>
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The growing consensus around the need for a strong central governing body with far-reaching powers to defeat an omnipotent and shadowy enemy has important implications for contemporary politics.  <\/P>
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Now, add to this two things.   The new realities of the “equality of terror”, and the demise of the old dispensation upon which liberalism and its system of capitalist political democracy<\/A> rests.   If the employment of terror, either by the state or by its non-state adversaries, sufficiently armed and equipped to present a formidable threat to the legitimacy of the state itself, becomes part of the political norm, or, in time, even the norm itself, what happens next?<\/P>
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This denouement<\/EM> holds important implications for a Marxist Left that has travelled far from its Leninist roots.   Should it continue down the parliamentary road the Left has increasingly chosen  in the modern era?   Or, should it rethink ancient strategies that risk becoming irrelevant or even dangerous given the new configuration in world politics?<\/P>
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Later: Lenin & Terror<\/EM><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

August is the birth month of four of my six children. It is also when most of us in the human race observe the anniversary of the nuclear holocaust in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and  Nagasaki, the first and only time such new and terrifying weapons were deliberately unleashed upon a largely civilian population.   Its denouement was hardly more edifying.   Possessing a monopoly of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1428],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marxisminternationstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}