How We Talk About War
What the discourse on the Israel-Hamas war tells us about neoliberal societies and the future of armed conflicts.
I started writing this piece some weeks after the massacre of 7 October but have since found it hard to achieve the quiet of mind and stillness of heart necessary for clear thinking. When I started this blog, I intended it to be a shelter in which I could retreat into calm reflection, regardless of what storms may rage outside. The past few months have fostered no room for such detached contemplation, and my thinking has often had to be quick and visceral; this is not what I intend for this space. Now I have reached a point at which, though still harbouring pools of upset, I am at least able to detect when my ideas are clouded by passion and so nip these tainted statements in the bud.
No Happy Endeavour
I will start with the fairly uncontroversial statement that war is no happy endeavour. It creates a state of altered reality where conventional morality is upended, a land of topsy-turvy in which, most strikingly, killing is now lawful. However, this shadowland must be summoned with caution; those with the power to bring it about must act responsibly for, in order for it to be effective, war must remain the exception and not the norm. But war must not be as the all-consuming flame lest the destruction it wreaks be to no avail. In other words, war has to be fought in a way that allows for the continuation of life in the belligerent states after the war has ended, not only, as the apologists would hold, on the grounds of our love of mankind, but also so the achieved aims and losses may be consolidated.
It is through this reasoning that we define the rules of engagement, upheld by international law and therefore applicable across borders; these define when it is just or unjust to declare a war and how armies should behave when a war is declared. When a war is unjustified, we speak of an unjust war; when armies transgress, we speak of war crimes.
The laws of war are fairly conservative in the sense that they are about calculated change. I’ve often heard it said the rules of war exist to avoid war from devolving into savagery, though I think this has the condescending ring of myth. I'm not sure there's a need for the rules of war in order to safeguard our morality as much as to ensure efficiency and results. War is as much an economic as it is an emotional enterprise; the expense is prohibitive. One might go to war on emotional grounds, but like with a business enterprise, one must have a careful plan to ensure the investment pays off.
I bring up the rules of engagement, war crimes and international law because over the past few months I have been observing the way these concepts are brandished by the supporters of each side in the current Israel-Hamas war. It should be noted I will be referring to this war as a case in point, but the point of this essay is not to discredit the narrative of one side or another, but rather to reflect about the perception of war in our times based on the public discourse. Before injecting these musings with the sap necessary to put forth buds, let’s quickly define the state of play:
State of Play
Hamas committed war crimes on 7 October by deliberately targeting civilians (it continues to do so with rocket salvoes). Israel is accused by many observers of committing war crimes in Gaza in its response to Hamas’ attack (such as collective punishment or excessive use of force), but because these are carried out in a context of open war, its supporters insist that the IDF’s kinetic choices fall within the bounds of international law. Some argue the high civilian death toll is collateral to their ‘targeted killings’ and the result of fighting in an urban environment, while others argue that Israel is pursuing a high civilian count by using excessively powerful explosives for assassinations that could be more effectively accomplished with more precise weapons. The jury's out and that is beyond the scope of this piece.
Most people who defend Israel’s actions staunchly deny the IDF is committing war crimes, whereas most Hamas supporters acknowledge the criminal nature of 7 October, arguing that this kind of attack is the only way for a resistance movement to inflict real damage on an occupying power. Whether we call Hamas’ actions a crime against humanity or a war crime depends on your views on the overarching Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that, too, is beyond the scope of this piece. The word ‘crime’, however, is inescapable.
War and Uprising
What follows from the above is that for a large part of the people following this war there is an understanding that the laws of war favour Israel, as it has the means and knowledge to operate within their bounds and still get away with extraordinary damage. This, in turn, leads many to conclude that these rules are rigged or broken and, therefore, breaking the rules of war (e.g. by targeting civilians) can be considered fair play on behalf of Hamas.
Israel was justified in responding to Hamas’ attack. The Palestinians are justified in resisting Israeli occupation of their land and commandeering of their rights. Supporters of both sides see themselves as supporting a just war. And yet, as we mentioned earlier, Hamas cannot escape the accusation of ‘crime’. To some this label seems harmful to their cause and would prefer the attack to be seen as an act of armed resistance to an unjust situation - but this is the vocabulary of revolution, not of the rules of engagement, and as such it would not hold sway in an international court. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to be critical of Israel’s military actions and simultaneously hold the belief that these are in line with international law, i.e., not ‘crimes’. Because of all this, it is plain why the rules of engagement are seen to give an unfair advantage to the mighty.
As the rules of engagement were originally defined to regulate war between states, Hamas is conveniently described as a state or a non-state actor depending on who’s talking. Supporters of Hamas lump them into the Palestinian plight as a whole to better describe their attack as part of an ongoing struggle against a dominant power. Detractors are quick to point out that they are the elected government of an autonomous territory, albeit one suffering from a crippling blockade, to better describe their attack as the start of an unjust war and so hold them accountable for their actions. In short, given the vocabulary employed to talk about war, it benefits those who support Hamas to push for it to be perceived as a grassroots resistance movement and not a state-like actor.
Already we are seeing a double narrative emerge. The reason I titled this piece ‘How We Talk About War’ is because I am trying to better understand a trend in popular discourse that I think says something about the psychology of our time. The trend is to divide modern armed conflicts into two categories. For the purposes of this essay, let’s call them War and Uprising. War is an armed conflict, be it just or unjust, declared by a state or state-like actor against an equal; it is guided by the rules of engagement and what it can get away with at any given time. An Uprising is the armed struggle of an oppressed group to rid itself of the yoke of a dominant power, defined by an asymmetry of means.
To be clear, this is purely a matter of optics; the two are not mutually exclusive. I believe most modern armed conflicts are in fact Wars, but when we, the general population, feel compelled (by the media, our beliefs, etc.) to support one side or another, we find it easier to stomach that the people we support are willing to break conventional morality and enter the shadowland of war if we think of our side as staging an Uprising. I’m not inventing the wheel here: this means we find it easier to support a side if we think of them as the victim. This perception bias leads many to believe that the rules of engagement should not apply to their side, because if the conflict is seen not as a confrontation between two armies that must follow the same principles, but as a struggle to free a group from a system that oppresses it, then it’s not a matter of winning a war, but of making moral progress. To change the status quo, one must break a few proverbial eggs.
War and Neoliberalism
This shift in our collective perception of conflict is that we now talk about War as if War were a crime in itself. Uprisings, on the other hand, are always seen as praiseworthy, and to try them with the laws used to regulate War is to automatically place yourself on the wrong side of history, going against something that is not only fundamentally right but ultimately inevitable. On the surface, this may appear to have Marxist undertones - which may in part explain Uprisings’ appeal to the Left -, but I believe it is in fact a neoliberal phenomenon.
The rules of war are old-fashioned insofar as they resemble courtship and ritual: they are reminders of a time when the respect for limits underpinned most social interactions. Our modern neoliberal world values excess, achievement and individuality. That is why we are intimidated by rules, oppression and death, all of which we perceive as stealing us of the chance to realise our full potential and be who we truly are.
In a neoliberal capitalist world, where we judge people’s lives by their achievements and output, we see death as life wasted, as unfulfilled potential. Life is, therefore, at the centre of our current worldview. We believe every life has something unique to provide to the world. And that is why we reel at the impersonal nature of War, why we decry ‘reducing people to numbers.’ We have to attach a story to every victim in order to properly appreciate the scale of their loss, which we measure by contrasting their achievements with what they hoped to achieve before their life project was cut short. When the numbers become too large to conceivably do that, we feel something in the foundations of our worldview begin to falter.
I believe this is where, deep down, the Western support from the underdog comes from, from a desire to see more people live the way we live, as self-made individuals in a free market. We see ourselves as the masters of our own life and hence don’t believe in grand narratives. We don’t believe states embody a series of values; rather, we read international politics as a series of pursuits of individual interests (more often than not, power). Hence popular sentiment in the West overwhelmingly roots for those whose chances of developing their full potential as individuals are thwarted: citizens of totalitarian regimes, oppressed minorities… In short, groups who require an Uprising to shake up the state of affairs that is barring them from joining the global neoliberal ball in which everyone gets to choose how they present themselves in society and what role they’ll play, and not have society be the one to define such matters for them.
As I have mentioned before on this blog, in a time when technological progress has plateaued, progress becomes moral. Maybe the world is asking for a revision of the rules of war. And what will become of War as this notion that the only just form of war is an Uprising ferments and starts to influence policy making? Will War become more moral? Personally, I don’t think so. Rather, I think it will popularise the kind of war that Hamas is waging, one that purposely disregards the rules that govern international law as they believe they conspire against them. We have perhaps already started to see this over the last 20 years with the advent of international terror.
Violence and Gamification
When pondering these subjects I keep hitting on the problem of violence. Is it not natural for people to feel empathy for the innocent dead no matter the context? If so, why do we support the commission of violence to others even if it is to bring about the liberation of the group we are rooting for?
Based on the way I see people talk about War, especially those not directly involved in one, it seems we have an easier time understanding War if we translate it into a system of gains. In other words, if we gamify it. The decision-making process behind any kinetic choice in a military operation takes into account a wide range of factors and will inevitably be influenced by personality and circumstance. But maybe if we, from our distant tiers, are only concerned about wasted life, it makes sense that we should develop a propensity for only keeping score of the dead (our dead), as opposed to taking an interest in the myriad factors, considerations and consequences that make up a military operation. Maybe. But this does little to explain our support for violence when it’s committed by those who we support.
In reality, even if it helps us to think about War as a game, War has next to nothing in common with games, which is why it is doubly disturbing to the popular sentiment in the West. As we said earlier, War is a cold economic exercise to bring about calculated change. Unlike in games, soldiers follow orders, a trait we associate with oppression and lack of free will, and it shakes us to the core to think that someone might kill because he was told to do so and not because he wanted to do so.
Perhaps this is another reason for the appeal of Uprisings. Uprisings are more akin to games insofar as they occur through the shared immersion of the participants. Revolutionaries forget themselves and take on a role, where free will is of the essence. Some people derisively call Hamas a death cult. I know it is intended as a derogatory term, but I don’t think it’s far from the mark. If the condition to participate in an Uprising against an oppressor is the acceptance of a game logic wherein, in order to play, you personally have to consent to the nature of the game, you willingly accept the possibility of death as a possible outcome. And if the goal is to defeat the enemy at all costs and your own death can help further the cause, it makes sense to take one for the team. This contrasts sharply with military logic, where the life of soldiers is not theirs to throw away; they are tools and they need to be kept alive in order to be suitably wielded. In Uprisings, you play; in War, you follow rules.
The same applies to civilian casualties, a practice that according to the rules of engagement should be avoided at all costs. Wars try to minimise civilian deaths in pursuit of efficiency (you will have to govern or live next to these people the day after the war); Uprisings embrace civilian deaths as a necessary price to pay for reaching their goals, which, as we have seen, are unattainable through strict adherence to the rules of engagement. Thucydides formulated a similar idea two thousand years ago: “The strong do as they can, while the weak do as they must.”
Today, we in the neoliberal West choose the side we support in a conflict based on whose lives are being deprived of the chance to be lived as we do, as free individuals, and yet do so by cheering on Uprisings that discard the rules of engagement and can only be fulfilled through the suicidal commitment of its participants. Better to die trying to become a free individual than live a life you don’t get to decide how to live. This seems to be the imperative ideal guiding how we talk about war.