The Current and Impending Global Threats: Reflections on Organised Violence
Prof. Siniša Malešević — Full Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University College, Dublin.
The Current and Impending Global Threats: Reflections on Organised Violence
The world is facing many current and impending threats. In this short presentation I will focus on one area that I study – the social dynamics of organised violence – with a view of identifying some contemporary and future trends. The first part of my presentation will reflect briefly on the destruction of eco-system and the development of new militaries technologies both of which are likely to have major impact on future wars. In the second part I will discuss some long-term trends of organised violence on society with the focus on the post-apocalyptic scenarios.
The Destruction of the Ecosystem and the Future of Organised Violence
One of the most important threats facing the world is the ever-intensifying destruction of the ecosystem. Over the last several decades one could witness the constant and largely cumulative degradation of the ecosystem through the continuing depletion of water, air, arable land, and other natural resources. The unprecedented climactic changes have already impacted on the melting of the glaciers, rise of the sea levels, the erosion of soil, deforestation, and increased flooding. The climactic changes have also become visible throughout the globe with the increase of natural disasters including earthquakes, droughts, and tsunamis while the continuous rise of temperatures has generated unbearably hot summers but also very cold winters in many parts of the world (Stuart, 2021; Wallace-Wells 2019). This constant large-scale destruction of the ecosystem is likely to affect the nature of organised violence in the future.
Many scholars have already explored the possible future dynamics of wars centred on the limited resources in an increasingly inhospitable and barely habitable planet. Hence Welzer (2017) and Dyer (2011) have described such violent conflicts in a near future as ‘the climate wars’ that are likely to transpire in a world affected by overheating. Mann (2022) and Klare (2002) have dubbed these future conflicts ‘the resources wars’. All these studies focus on the likely increase of violent conflicts over limited natural resources and offer mostly economistic explanations of this phenomenon. The lack of food, water, fresh air, arable land, and a safe habitat are perceived to lead towards inevitable conflicts of all against all. Although these are all very valuable contributions, they offer overly instrumentalist understanding of social action and do not pay enough attention to the cultural and historical variability of social change. The economistic analyses of violent conflict downplay the significance of state power while also overemphasising instrumental motivations of individuals. In this type of analysis economic self-interest is juxtaposed to the cultural beliefs and political power. For example this type of scholarship often interprets globalisation and the rise of nationalism and strengthening of state institutions to be mutually exclusive processes. However, as much of recent research on the state demonstrates rather than diminishing the state power globalisation has in fact helped enhance organisational capacity of many states. In contrast to their 18th or 19th century counterparts who were unable to fully tax their citizens, police their borders or gather even some basic information on the inhabitants the contemporary nation-states have dramatically increased such infrastructural powers (Malešević 2019, 2017, 2013). Moreover the state apparatuses have managed to penetrate nearly every aspect of social life, from education, health, economy, mass media, sports, immigration, environmental planning, culture, employment policies, urban surveillance to the ever-increasing policing of ethnic and sexual relations. The new technologies and the global visibility of mass media have fostered increased organisational potency of nation-states. More importantly despite the rhetoric and practice of neo-liberalism the most powerful states continue to control the use of, and access to, the vital resources and all have had increased their military and police force over the last three decades (Hall 2013; Hirst and Thompson 2009).
Hence to better understand the dynamics of violent conflicts in the future there is need to shift the focus from economic instrumentalism in direction of the more sociological analyses. In particular one should analyse the crucial role the coercive-organisational power plays in the transformation of organised violence (Malešević 2022, 2017, 2013, 2010). The role of nation-state and its coercive-organisational capacity remain crucial in understanding the dynamics of wars as most armed conflicts emerge as a result of geo-political transformations. In this context the destruction of eco-system is likely to impact on the transformation of state power whereby some states, directly affected by environmental disasters, might collapse while other states, less affected by such changes, are likely to increase their coercive capacities. In other words the destruction of eco system is bound to generate very asymmetrical experiences with some polities investing heavily in the new organisational and technological devices to control their populations and borders while other states being affected by the rising sea levels, droughts, floods, and unbearable temperatures losing many of their organisational capacities to police their territories.
In such a radically changed geopolitical environment one is likely to see more reliance on new technologies of warfare across such areas as robotics, nanotechnology, cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and pharmacology. The new developments in these technological fields would also allow powerful states to rely more on the non-human devices in warfare that would limit the number of human casualties. This is not a new trend as many militaries have already invested extensively in the development of drones, unmanned submarines, patrol robots, robotic mine sweepers and even autonomous sniper systems. Some militaries have also been initiating programmes for the development of non-lethal weapons such as lasers producing temporary blindness, nonlethal riot control devices, and the devices that would generate drug induced mass hallucinations (Malešević 2017). This increased reliance on new technologies has led some scholars to argue that ‘robots will be fighting robots in 2035 (Coker 2013: xxiii). However this view does not take into account that not all states will posses organisational and technological capacities to build and deploy robotic devices to the battlefields. The sharp social inequalities that are likely to characterise future societies will also have significant impact on the future wars. Hence instead of robots fighting robots it is more likely that powerful states located in the environmentally less affected areas of the planet will be able to produce military robots while others will have to continue using human soldiers. So instead of robots fighting robots one is more likely to see robots fighting poorer humans many of whom will also try to escape the uninhabitable part of the world.
The Images of the Apocalypse
The continuous destruction of ecosystem has led many observers towards the conclusion that the long-term future might bring about the complete collapse of state structures that would result in a post-apocalyptic world. In this view once states implode and there is no centralised power violence will inevitably ensue with everybody fighting for their own survival. In this Hobbesian worldview the break down of states is perceived to automatically generate a return to the ‘state of nature’, a situation where no one is safe and everyone if fearful for their life.
The contemporary popular culture including the science fiction novels, films, TV shows, video games and social media all project very similar post-apocalyptic scenarios. In this view the state collapse leads to the re-organisation of social order where violence proliferates and where the strong dominate the weak. This Hobbesian understanding of violence in the near future permeates much of popular culture. The most popular films and tv programmes, from Mad Max to Walking Dead, all depict similar post-apocalyptic environment – the sudden disintegration of state power creates an environment where violence becomes a norm.
These influential depictions of the future reproduce the original Hobbesian view where the ‘state of the nature’ was envisaged as a place without a social order. In Hobbes’s (2004 [1651]). own words, this is world where there are ‘no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’…’To this war of every man against every man, this also in consequent; that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force, and fraud, are in war the cardinal virtues’. Hence for Hobbes there is no ethical behaviour outside of the state laws. In this understanding violence is integral to human subjectivity.
This Hobbesian ontology of violence has been dominant in social and political thought for centuries and can still be recognised across different academic disciplines – from cognitive evolutionary psychology, the traditional military history to the neo-realist approaches in international relations. Nevertheless this interpretation of the past and the future is deeply flawed as it ignores the cultural and historical diversities that have characterised much of human behaviour. The social contract perspective is sociologically unrealistic as it portrays human past in terms that bear no resemblance to the actual past – anthropologists have demonstrated on numerous occasions that there never was anything resembling ‘state of nature’ in the world of hunter gatherers (Fry 2007).
Instead of this Hobbesian ontology where the ancient past is perceived as the world populated only by individuals who are apolitical, pre-social and ahistorical anthropologists and sociologists show that the ancient human beings were first and foremost communal creatures that survived and developed through interaction with others. Moreover much of recent archaeology and palaeontology indicates that the simple hunter gatherers were generally wary of violence. Heuser (2010:4) summaries the existing research on violence before the Neolithic and Holocene periods and concludes that ‘all archaeological evidence of violent death… is limited to finds of single bodies’. Instead of being a human default position violence develops with the rise of social organisations and especially with the emergence of the state structures in the last 10,000-12,000 years. Violence is not a phenomenon that resides in the bodies and minds of individuals but is an artefact generated through coordinated social action which is often institutionalised through organisational power (Malešević 2022, 2017). Violence is not a biological prerequisite; it is a social process that requires extensive amount of social action. Historical sociologists have demonstrated convincingly that sustained violent action entails substantial organisational capacity which involves structured coordination of thousands and even millions of human beings (Tilly 1992). The modern states possess now enormous coercive powers and have, for the most part, managed to pacify their societies and establish monopolies on the legitimate use of violence over their territories. However this does not mean that violence has evaporated in the contemporary world. On the contrary violence is now concentrated in the fewer social organisations and is largely monopolised by the state. In times of war one can see how the states can quickly and effectively unleash this violence. Hence, to understand the historical dynamics of violence it is important to understand its social features. Violence can rise and decline only through the coordinated social action.
In this context the dominant post-apocalyptic scenarios that portray the future as an environment where everybody behaves in the same way are sociologically unrealistic. Human beings are not simple and uniform automatons; instead they are dynamic, inventive, and adoptable creatures who are influenced by other human beings. So it is very likely that even in the post-apocalyptic environment there would be great variety of social responses to violence. The apocalypse would not represent a year zero where everybody starts from the blank slate (Malešević 2022). Instead human beings are likely to continue to rely on the cultural, political, and ideological parameters that have shaped their upbringing. We are not only homo economici who perceive their world through the prism of self-interest. We are complex and often unpredictable creatures who are influenced by variety of social, political, economic, and cultural factors. One could observe how the recent Сovid 19 pandemic unfolded in a highly diverse ways. Although this was a phenomenon that has affected the entire planet the responses to the pandemic were different from one state to another and also within each society. The states pursued very different policies of containment and populations also reacted very differently across the globe. So, the collapse of the world order is also likely to generate diversity of social responses.
For one thing the dominant post-apocalyptic narratives centre on the sudden and irreversible collapse while the existing knowledge about civilisational and state collapses throughout history show that in majority of cases the collapse was a slow and protracted process, not swift obliteration (Middleton 2017, Diamond 2005). For another thing the collapse of the state does not have to be irreversible, as one can see from many contemporary contexts where former ‘failed states’ such as Rwanda, Eritrea, or Liberia were able to recover relatively quickly and in some cases such as Rwanda have also become economically prosperous societies. Furthermore as social order can exist outside of the state structures it seems highly unlikely that the apocalypse would obliterate human sociability. Violence that can ensue in the wake of state collapse is often an organised attempt to establish a monopoly on the legitimate use of force over a particular territory. This is not an automatic biological response but a coordinated social activity with a specific political goal.
Thus, the dominant post-apocalyptic narratives which draw on the Hobbesian ontology and project a uniform human response to violence are wrong and inadequate for accounting for the sheer diversity of human action.
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