Asymmetric War and Its Journalists

Dissent ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-84
Author(s):  
Michael Walzer
Keyword(s):  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
S. Jonathon O’Donnell

Taking point from a post-9/11 spiritual warfare narrative in which models of asymmetric war are used to reconceptualize the demonic, the Introduction argues that figures of the demonic are both consolidating and deconstructive of systems of power, particularly those tied to sovereignty, identity, and empire. Weaving together two definitions of demonology, by Bruce Lincoln and Marcella Althaus-Reid, respectively, it demonstrates that demonology operates as a rubric of knowledge aimed at the classification, comprehension, and control of nonhuman and dehumanized others—the demonized—who simultaneously unsettle those rubrics of knowledge by exposing their categories as constructed and not natural. Mobilizing queer and critical race theory, it then situates the demon’s deconstructive quality in its figuration of passing and counterfeiture, which unsettle territorial boundaries, stable identities, and linear models of temporality.


2006 ◽  
Vol 45 (379) ◽  
pp. 49-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Freedman
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Saskia Sassen

This chapter covers the question of organized religions in the complex global modernity. It explores a range of interactions between the rise of cities as key global spaces for economic, political, and cultural conditions, and the rise of religion as a major force in setting where it was not quite so in the twentieth century, which saw the rise of the secularizing state. The chapter develops the urbanizing of war, as it feeds a particularly acute and violent bridging of cities with religious conflicts, and then takes two specific instances of asymmetric war, one in Mumbai and one in Gaza, to investigate the variable and contradictory elements in this bridging. Religion has emerged as one key organizing and legitimating passion, even as it is often not the cause. The Mumbai attacks had succeeded in drawing a conventional inter-state conflict into the specifics and momentary event that was that attack. Gaza displays the limits of power and the limits of war. The chapter makes visible the territorial conflict driving some of the current religious conflict, even as both sides make use of this long history to justify their actions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 214-237
Author(s):  
Chad L. Smith ◽  
Michael R. Lengefeld

Warmaking and war preparation have changed significantly in the 21st century. A number of scholars have documented and analyzed these changes. Drawing on work focused upon “new war” and “new militarism,” we argue that one facet of these practices has received little attention—the environmental consequences of “new militarism.” Specifically, we contend that “asymmetric war” through the mechanism of risk-transfer militarism results in increased carbon emissions. Our analyses utilize fixed effects models for 126 countries using international panel data from 2000 to 2010. We sketch the differences in these outcomes for both developed and developing nations, contextualize carbon emissions within both times of economic prosperity and decline, provide evidence of the differential effects on carbon emissions by a nation’s world-systems standing, and provide empirical evidence of the rise of risk-transfer militarism and its negative effects on the environment.


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