The Everywhere War Presented by Radovan Marek and Megan Orr
Article Summary Global battle spaces enable the everywhere war to take place. ● Boundaries are blurred, ex: Iraq and its Green and Red Zones, blurring into ● Brown 3 Major events: Af-Pak, Amexica, and Cyberspace. ● Af-Pak - Obama Administration's war on the Taliban and al Qaeda. ● Amexica - US and Mexico border and the war on drugs. ● Cyberspace - Virtual spaces and cyberwarfare, ex: DARPA and DDS ●
For those in the US war began with 9/11
9/11 for those outside America marked “A climactic summation of a longer history of American imperialism in general and its meddling in the Middle East in particular” (p. 238)
State of Permanent Warfare Our wars and their wars - one uncivilized and the other conducted with precision. ● Boundaries are now blurred - Ex: US-led war on Afghanistan. ● Everywhere war - dealing with biopolitics, geopolitics, and geoeconomics. ● Constantly on the move - Extraterritorial ● Zones, green and red - Ex: Iraq US Command bases green, everywhere else red. ● Blurring occurs, producing brown. War is always somewhere ●
Af-Pak Term for the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda - highly offensive to the ● Afghan and Pakistani people. Hyphen represents the Durand Line - border between Afghanistan and Pakistan ● Left over from colonial India ● Over 50,000 cross the border daily without documents. ● Inhabitants cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan. ● This includes the Taliban. ● Unguarded border, leads to fighting on both sides. ●
CIA Involvement CIA led attacks from bases in Afghanistan but remotely controlled from the US. ● UAV drones: MQ1-Predator and MQ9-Reaper. In 2001, the Predator was armed ● with hellfire missiles as well. CIA in control - classified as unlawful combatants according to Bush after 9/11 ● CIA and Military - Blurring of lines ● Q: In this day of transnational combat, Where does the global battlespace end? ● Does it end?
Civilianisation of War ● Outsourcing of support services to contractors ● CIA as a paramilitary organization Director of CIA not an air force general ○ Is the militarization of society and the civilianisation of war the same? How are they different/the same?
Lack of Accountability ● Secrecy ● Civilian casualties ● No inquiries ● No compensation (p. 242) What does this mean for the ways in which these wars are conducted?
Amexica Two worlds collide to form a third world - border culture. ● Militarized campaign on narcotic trafficking and Mexico - war on drugs. ● Drug traffickers and migrants are being labeled as terrorists and insurgents. ● Started with Nicaraguan drug cartels and CIA support - guns for drugs ● Proxy War - war on drugs, slowly led to militarization of border ● Border Wars - T.V series ● Border has slowly expanded - military personnel, equipment, and tactics used ● against the war on drugs. Mexico will be a battleground for cartels and will spill over in US. ● Q: Is this an endless war machine? Agree or disagree? ●
An Open Wound ● The third world grates against the first and bleeds ● Capital and commodities are welcome, but not migrants ● How this links to poverty Intergenerational issue ○ The idea of the link between third generation gangs and and fourth generation warfare
DARPA and DDS ARPANET evolved into DARPA ● Packet-switching protocol for US DARPA - Surveillance and communications ● ARPANET crashed from DDS attacks ● DDS attacks are Distributed Denial of Service attacks which target vulnerable ● infrastructure causing it to shut down - Overload of code DDS attacks are commonly used by hackers, but can be used by anyone who has ● access to a script - Russian hackers or Script kiddies
Russia’s July 2008 Cyber Attack on Georgia “This episode is significant not only because it was ‘the first time a known cyber-attack had coincided with a shooting war’ (Markoff 2008) but also because it suggests an emerging model of cyber warfare that involves both the outsourcing of cyber attacks and the militarisation of cybercrime” (p. 245)
Cyberspace Intermingling between physical and virtual spaces ● Advanced surveillance and communications systems make military and civilian ● nodes prime targets Like an autoimmune attack, the system turning against itself Cyber attacks take advantage of the spread out nature of cyberspaces which can ● hide the aggressor ○ Even stealth attacks themselves can be partially concealed as well
Stuxnet
‘If the military is operating in cyberspace, does this include civilian computers in American homes?’ (p. 247)
Questions to be asked about these processes: 1. Is this ethical or even legal? 2. What are the clear definitions of a cyber attack? 3. How can civilians be protected?
Group Exercise In groups of 3, with each group looking at a different event from the article, do ● you agree or disagree with the analysis that the military influences each of these scenarios directly? And how? Af-Pak Military Amexica Cyberspace
Summary 9/11 used as a means to justify acts ● of war War on terror as a system of ● oppression There’s always a separation: us ● versus them The common thread: is any of this ● legal or ethical? The boundaries of war are blurred ●
True or False Quiz 1. Battlefields are multi-scalar, multi-dimensional spaces 2. UAV stands for Unarmed Aerial Vehicle 3. The CIA was created in 1947 as a civilian agency 4. Predator and Reaper drones used to control the US border 5. The United States was behind the STUXNET cyberattacks
References Kokym8. (2009, Apr 26). First and Second Plane Hit the Twin Towers [video file]. ● Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJDDSPYQgQc Hungry Beast. (2011, June 8). STUXNET: The Virus that Almost Started WW3 ● [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g0pi4J8auQ Warleaks - Daily Military Defense Videos & Combat Footage. (2015, Sept 29). ● What it Looks like to Operate the MQ-1 Predator Drone [video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCGgwQTz1qk Knazev, O. (2012, Dec 8). MQ-9 Reaper UAV Predator. [video file]. Retrieved ● from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sTDxk3Jo4c Military.com. (2015, May 14). Hellfire Missiles. [video file]. Retrieved from ● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm4h1dA8ORo
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