CH. 16. War on Terrorism

Question 1

War

Answer 1

WAR – Organized, collective fighting between at least one political unit that seeks political or economic control over a territory or other important resource and another political unit or social group.

• War is a social concept because it involves culture, politics, and economics, the features of human society
• War is “organized and collective,” which sets it off from more individual, sporadic, and spontaneous acts of violence.
• War is “political” because the fighting units use violence deliberately in the search for a particular outcome, such as control over a governing structure, natural resources, or suppression of a population that is regarded as oppositional.
• Wars also take the form of:
  
  • campaigns of ethnic cleansing, such as in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s;
  • genocide, such as in Rwanda in 1994; and
  • violent political repression, such as the so-called Dirty War carried out against those opposed to military rule in Argentina.
• In Cambodia, over the last half of the 1970s, as much as 25% of the population was decimated, as Cambodians were either executed by the Khmer Rouge, an ultraleft political group that had seized power.
• In globalized intrastate wars (Within a single nation), organized violence is less political and more economic because the motive is to control valuable resources.

RESOURCE WARS – These conflicts differ from classic war in several ways:

1. They include multiple types of fighting units, such as paramilitary forces, mercenaries, self-defense units, militaries from other countries, and even peacekeeping forces.
2. they frequently target civilians, often by employing sexual violence.
3. they often conscript child soldiers.
4. they establish connections between in-country actors, such as local warlords and traders in the valuable commodity, and international players such as corporations, banking interests, and global agencies such as the United Nations.

Question 2

Incidence of Interstate War

Answer 2

INCIDENCE OF INTERSTATE WAR (Between Nations):

• Wars waged between states (nations) are declining in number. This decline is ascribed to political and economic changes on a global level.
• Since the end of World War II, the international community has developed mechanisms and institutions that facilitate conflict mediation and resolution among nations.
  
  • Furthermore, the steady movement from autocracies to democracies throughout the globe has provided additional stability to the world system.

DEMOCRATIC THEORY OF PEACE – democracies are less likely to wage war, at least with each other, so as more nations become democratic, the chances of interstate armed conflict decrease.

• The fast pace of globalization has made war less effective in achieving economic goals than it was in the past.
• Today, it is almost always cheaper to buy resources on the global market than to acquire them by force.

McDONALD’S THEORY OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION – Suggests that countries where McDonald’s have been established do not go to war with each other.

• Similar predictions apply to politically motivated civil wars. The European colonial systems of the 19th century have been almost entirely dismantled.
  
  • colonial wars ended after 1973. Former colonies now enjoy at least formal political sovereignty.
    
    • They may suffer different forms of subordination, including high levels of poverty, poor governance, and inadequate education and health care – conditions often called “STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE” and “NEOCOLONIALISM” – but they no longer need to engage in direct violence to achieve independence.

Question 3

Globalized Intrastate Wars

Answer 3

GLOBALIZED INTRASTATE WARS (Within a single country – Civil War) – Organized violence used to control territory containing valuable resources, often fought by paramilitary forces, targeting civilians, containing high levels of sexual violence, and using child soldiers.

• International forces, sometimes backed by the United Nations, may also be involved.
• Deliberate expulsion of civilians in ethnic cleansing campaigns allows the warlords to tighten control over territory.
• Humanitarian aid can become an additional lootable resource that fuels the conflict and makes the war self-financing.
• Civilian aid officials and nongovernmental organizations had to allow some aid to enter the black market in return for ensuring that some of it be used for its intended purposes.
  
  • U.S. military paid contractors to transport supplies across Afghanistan, but the social networks included criminal groups, Afghan power brokers, and subcontractors with links to insurgents. This form of corruption, called “threat financing,” involved U.S.-funded development efforts in Afghanistan but inadvertently supported the Taliban.

Question 4

Economic Costs of War and War Preparation

Answer 4

ECONOMIC COSTS OF WAR AND WAR PREPARATION – The United States spends almost as much on its military as the rest of the world combined.

• After the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, however, budget increases over the next decade for the Global War on Terror and the new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq doubled U.S. defense spending.

Question 5

Who Serves in the U.S. Armed Forces?

Answer 5

Who Serves in the U.S. Armed Forces?:

• Lower -income
• African Americans – who have been able to achieve success and social mobility—often more so than in civilian society.
• Latinos have steadily increased their representation.
• People from rural areas, the South, and the Mountain states.

Question 6

Psychological Costs of War

Answer 6

PSYCHOLOGICAL COSTS OF WAR:

• POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD) – Specific set of symptoms associated with the aftermath of exposure to traumatic experiences.
  
  • Those with PTSD are also more likely to suffer alcohol and drug abuse, family problems, and suicide.
• Between one-sixth and one-third of veterans experience PTSD, depression, or other significant psychological trauma.

Question 7

The Future of War – Drones

Answer 7

DRONES – Drones constitute a key component of the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) that applies new digital technologies to enhance the accuracy and effectiveness of weapons.

• Drones appear to offer an effective and less expensive substitute for ground forces.
  
  • Also, the drone program over Pakistan is run by the Central Intelligence Agency and is not officially acknowledged by the government. It is therefore possible for the CIA to use lethal force covertly, while the government of Pakistan can deny it is allowing a foreign power to wage war on its territory.
• ‘DOUBLE TAP’ STRATEGY – which a target is hit with a missile and then struck again when others come to help or investigate.
  
  • Nor are the rules of engagement that govern the drone program transparent.
• Drones also have considerable “second-order effects,” or indirect impacts.
  
  • Stress to civilians who hear them constantly buzzing overhead.

Question 8

Women in Combat Roles

Answer 8

WOMEN IN COMBAT ROLES:

• 2013, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced the end of the ban on women serving in combat roles.
• In 2015, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter approved implementation plans for the integration of women into direct ground combat roles.

HYPERMASCULINITY – An intensification of traits typically associated with stereotypical male behavior: physical strength, aggressiveness, assertiveness, risk-taking, virility, and an appreciation for danger and adventure.

• Military training, and the goal of strengthening bonding within small units, may also rest on shared male identity.
  
  • Women may still face opposition in taking combat roles, but not because they are physically weaker. The “problem” is that their presence may rupture male solidarity.
• Biological sex has not disappeared, but it has become much less important than task or functional training.
• Eligibility for full combat will be necessary for women if they are to achieve full equality in the armed forces.

Question 9

Functionalism

Answer 9

FUNCTIONALISM – Structural functionalist approach takes a macro view and looks at the relationships between particular phenomena, such as crime or health, and the overall organization of society. Its tendency is to focus on social order. “Structures” can be said to be “functional” when they strengthen the capacity of society to hold itself together.

• With regard to the military in general – the reason for the existence of the military is to keep the country safe.
• With regard to war – Functionalists actually see societal use for it. War may seem an odd contributor to the stability and functioning of society, and its dysfunctions usually do outweigh the benefits. However, the benefits should not be overlooked.
  
  • EX: The United States’ experience during World War II illustrates the structural-functionalist perspective. The entire country was mobilized behind the war effort. Every medically eligible male served in the armed forces, intelligence, administration, or government. The economy was largely driven by the war, women flowed into the workforce to replace men fighting overseas, and the participation of minorities improved on the past record of discrimination.
    
    • This experience helped lay the groundwork for the expansion of citizenship rights after the war, helped the United States finally emerge from the Great Depression, and introduced technical innovations (e.g. radar and improvements in aircraft engines) among other things.

Policy Implications of Structural Functionalism:

• The most important policy implication of the structural functionalist perspective is that war, or at least preparation for war, might be necessary to defend society against outside threats.
  
  • EX: Supporters of nuclear deterrence would argue that during the Cold War, the mutual threat of the United States and the Soviet Union to destroy each other with atomic weapons maintained a certain kind of peace between them.
• Structural functionalists take a similar stance toward the armed forces as a whole: ​Lethal force can be used, but only under clearly defined circumstances and with the approval of civilian leaders. Ultimately, the reason for the existence of the military is to keep the country safe.
• Maintaining the security of society by means of its military certainly falls short of a nonviolent ideal, but it is preferable to the existence of numerous armed substate actors, all using or threatening violence to achieve private interests.

Question 10

Conflict Theory

Answer 10

CONFLICT THEORY – Focuses on power structures and the inequalities that drive the war system.

• One of the most important concepts conflict theorists employ is the idea of the MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, or the relationships among government forces, the Pentagon, and defense contractors that promote the acquisition of weapons systems and a militarized foreign policy.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation of the Military-Industrial Complex. This was remarkable because it came from an individual who was not only president of the United States but also the former commanding general of Allied forces in Europe and the head of the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

• With Eisenhower’s speech, the term military-industrial complex entered the national vocabulary.
• Sociologically, the military-industrial complex contains a series of distinct features.
  
  • The strong compatibility of interest among top Pentagon officials, defense contractors, and members of Congress.
    
    • This common interest results in the purchase of expensive weapons systems that are often unneeded or that underperform.
  • The military-industrial complex is guided by self-interest rather than policy.
    
    • EX: the military continues to invest in the acquisition of large tanks, weapons of a method of conducting war that is largely obsolete. Members of Congress often support weapons procurement programs that benefit their districts, regardless of whether the programs contribute to national security. Even liberals, generally doves with respect to war policy, vote to retain military bases that are no longer useful, or armaments the military itself may oppose, in order to benefit their local constituencies.
• MILITARY DEFINITION OF REALITY – According to Mills, most civilian and military leaders in the United States see the world as an unsettled, competitive, often hostile arena in which military prowess is the best option for securing national interests and maintaining U.S. status as the most powerful nation in the world.
  
  • Mills identified power as rooted in the control of large-scale, bureaucratically structured organizations, be they big business, the executive branch of government, or the military itself.

Policy Implications of the Conflict Perspective:

• The military-industrial complex holds considerable influence in that the United States is more war-prone than most Americans believe.
  
  • According to CONFLICT THEORISTS, the war system proved expensive at home and shrank the possibilities for democratic reform abroad.
• In 2002, President George W. Bush endorsed an internal government report titled National Security Strategy of the United States of America, which outlined a strategy of preventive war in which the United States would have to “act against emerging threats before they are fully formed.”
  
  • The conclusion called for “anticipatory action to defend ourselves—even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”
• Conflict theorists also note profiteering in the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially because new policies relied more heavily on private military contractors such as Halliburton and Blackwater.
• The Global War on Terror also favors a militarized approach to security rather than a combination of policing, building a broader range of allies, and conflict resolution.
• Meanwhile, the illegal “rendition” of terror suspects to foreign prisons, abuse and torture conducted by the United States itself, negative images of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, and the use of drones have provided robust recruitment incentives for the very insurgents the United States is trying to defeat.
• Conflict theorists say these policies are counterproductive for most U.S. citizens but reflect the priorities of the country’s power elite.

Question 11

Symbolic Interactionism

Answer 11

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM – Symbolic interaction try to understand how individuals acquire the meanings and understandings that govern their interactions with other individuals and social groups. People interpret the surrounding circumstances and then play out these interpretations.

• Social interaction is a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach to social life.
• COOPERATIVE BEINGS – Although people appear, at first, to be confrontational, research has shown that on average, we are actually quite cooperative, if not merely because we do not want to suffer the consequences of confrontation.
  
  • But if we are predominantly cooperative, how can we also engage in torture, rape, killing, and other destructive acts?
• The answer is that several factors must come together for humans to exercise violence on a horrific scale. Fortunately, these three rarely come together:

1. AUTHORIZATION – Leaders define a situation so that individuals are absolved of responsibility for making personal moral choices.
   
   • People act badly because an authority has given them the approval to do so.
2. ROUTINIZATION – Actions become organized by well-established procedures so there is no opportunity for raising moral questions.
   
   • Individuals act badly because they believe in a routine that determines how they are to behave; they no longer have to make deliberate decisions.
3. DEHUMANIZATION – Attitudes reflect perceptions that the targets are less than human.
   
   • People act badly because they see only objects, animals, or vicious enemies, not human beings.

• Research has shown that when these three things come together, moral decision-making was suspended.

Policy Implications of Symbolic Interactionism:

• One striking sociological finding is that it is actually very difficult to get human beings to kill each other, even in the midst of war. During World War II, less than 25% of combat soldiers could be counted on to fire their weapons at the enemy. Everyone else fired in the air, refused to shoot, or huddled near the ground.
  
  • Almost all the actual fighting was carried out by a relatively small number of combatants.
• Firing ratios improved during the Vietnam War and among front-line soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. This rise in efficiency rested on findings of other studies that in the heat of battle, soldiers fight not for abstractions such as “democracy” or “freedom,” or even to protect the homeland from attack. Instead, they fight because they are loyal to the people in their immediate unit.
  
  • Training therefore now focuses on deepening the microlevel solidarity of small fighting units; comradeship, mutual respect, and not letting others down are the key motivations.
    
    • Only through close attention to social organization and the creation of new norms forged in the intensity of small-group interaction do soldiers perform as their leaders desire.

Question 12

Two-Society Thesis

Answer 12

TWO-SOCIETY THESIS – Says there is a widening gap in the values and culture between military and civilian society and this has the potential to threaten the idea that the military should be a representation of the greater population.

• In 1973, the Pentagon ended the draft and established an ALL-VOLUNTEER FORCE (AVF).
• One important result of an AVF is that the military may become a society within a society.
• A significant gap between military and civilian experiences and attitudes threatens a cornerstone of a democratic society—that the fighting force is drawn from and is representative of everyone.
  
  • The two-society thesis recognizes that most U.S. adults support the military in many ways. But beneath that important social fact, disparities between classes, cultures, and belief systems structure a divide between military and civilian life.
• Two-society thesis assumes that soldiers, both enlisted and officers, will make military service a career lasting significantly longer than the 18 to 24 months draftees served.
• Yet a very small proportion of U.S. citizens serve in the armed forces – significantly less than 1% of the population.

Burk (2008) notes, “Warfighting still determines the central beliefs, values, and complex symbolic formations that define military culture.” And army veteran Matt Gallagher, who served in Iraq, has observed, “A lot of guys feel that they’re part of a warrior caste, separate and distinct from society” (quoted in Thompson, 2011).

• In 1993, President Clinton modified the standing policy of excluding gays and lesbians from the military by adopting a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT).
• Over the past decade, a remarkable sea change has occurred within the military, driven largely by generational changes in the larger society.
• As in many other militaries around the world, gays and lesbians can now serve openly in the U.S. armed forces.

Question 13

Network of U.S. Foreign Military Bases

Answer 13

NETWORK OF US FOREIGN MILITARY BASES:

• The United States has established an enormous number of military bases throughout the world, reaching a total of over 1,000.
  
  • Structural functionalists might argue that the bases are a vital component of U.S. defense.
  • Conflict theorists might suggest they are better understood as agents of influence and control.

Question 14

Terrorism

Answer 14

TERRORISM – “Violence perpetrated for political reasons by subnational groups or secret state agents, often directed at noncombatant targets, and usually intended to influence an audience.”

• “Terrorist” or “Freedom Fighter” depends on who is defining the act.
  
  • EX: As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission later documented, it was the government’s brutal repression of anti-apartheid activists that was fully “terrorist.”
  • EX: the Irish Republican Army and its struggle against British occupation, and Jewish resistance movements in British Palestine who kidnapped soldiers and bombed civilian and military facilities.

Question 15

Weighing the Risks of Terrorism

Answer 15

WEIGHING THE RISKS OF TERRORISM:

In 22015, the US government spent $65 billion to protect against terrorism.

• The risk of a U.S. citizen becoming a victim of a terrorist attack at home is relatively low; victims number fewer than 10 a year since September 11, 2001. In comparison, about 50 people in the United States are murdered, 85 take their own lives, and 120 die in traffic accidents every day.
• From the social problems perspective, are these commitments the best way to allocate scarce resources? The goal is to save lives. Is this the most efficient way to spend money to accomplish that goal?
• We can reduce the deaths, injuries, and other costs of many of those problems more effectively than we can reduce those from terrorism.
  
  • Initiating such programs would cost money, although far less than is currently spent on combating the terrorist threat.
• The Sociological perspective makes two points when it comes to policy alternatives:
  
  • _​_First, the way we prioritize social problems has important consequences for society.
  • Second, the way we respond to social problems—how much money we spend, which remedies we follow, and which we ignore—creates an agenda.
• The risks of terrorism cannot be ignored. But it is also clear that concentrating more effort on programs that address other social problems would save more lives.

Question 16

The Global War on Terror

Answer 16

THE GLOBAL “WAR ON TERROR”:

• After the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush administration established a distinct framework for response.
  
  • That would integrate a series of military, political, legal, intelligence, and policy measures, with a focus largely on militant Islamic groups such as al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations.
• After 9/11 the definition of “enemy combatant” was broadened to include any person who engages in hostile acts against the United States as designated by the commander in chief.

Question 17

Limitations of the Global War on Terror

Answer 17

LIMITATIONS OF THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM:

• The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged many sections of the Patriot Act as infringing on civil liberties in general and on the First Amendment in particular.