War Making and State Making: The State of Israel and Its Socioeconomic Dependence on War
A century ago, Europeans might have congratulated themselves on the spread of civil government throughout the world. In our time, the analogy, between war making and state making on the one hand, and organized crime on the other, is becoming typically more apt.
Charles Tilly
Israel is highly militarized and it is per capita basis, the most militarized nation in the world. It thinks of itself in a perpetual state of war. Since 1967, it has continuously occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It has defied more U.N. resolutions than any other country in the world. Its heads of state and political leaders are apprehensive about travelling due to fear of getting arrested for alleged war crimes.
Related Theories
To begin the author has used Jeffery Reiman’s Pyrrhic Defeat Theory to explain how Israel’s failure to create real peace with its neighbors and specifically Palestinians has really meant a victory for the state that looks into war as the only viable political and economic alternative.
Pyrrhic defeat theory—winning through losing or success through failure— is a concept developed by Jeffery Reiman in order to demystify the maladies of the American criminal justice system. His objective is to explain the reasons why the American criminal justice system has failed in reducing crime and in the disproportionate imprisonment of minorities, and the high rates of incarcerations without serious results. He argues that all institutions that make up the American criminal justice system, including the court system, are designed to fail; that such failure perpetuates the extant social stratification in both realms of political power and economic gain and maintains the extant class hierarchy (Reiman, 2004). Through my research on the subject of Israeli militarism, I have encountered the same type of policy making as far as maintaining a rationale for Israel to continue its policy. The state of Israel’s policy in relation to its neighbors has failed over and over again in terms of creating long-term or short-term peace.
Before getting into specific cases of war and a culture of war the author will explain what it means by Pyrrhic victory, Pyrrhic defeat and achieving success through failure.
Pyrrhic victory is defined as a victory in which the winning side has lost so much—military equipment, soldiers, high ranking officers, money, and allies—that it really amounts to a defeat because so many resources have been relinquished. For example, a territory was gained and the enemy was conquered, but nearly the entire winning army—soldiers and arms—were lost. Furthermore, it has cost the winning side a tremendous amount of resources to point of irreparability. It is essentially losing everything through a victory or success.
Pyrrhic defeat, however, is the opposite. In this case we have victory through failure. While it seems that Israeli effort to create peace in the Middle East has failed, the effort however, has had tremendous gains in rationalizing Israeli political and military expenditure in maintaining a culture of constant threat to the lives of people and therefore national security. So the unresolved conflict between Palestine and Israel, Iran and Israel, and Syria and Israel, are all failures. In essence it is the Israeli failing in its mission to bring peace with its neighbors. Policies to resolve these conflicts have failed, but Israel is unwilling to give up militarism as a solution because it has gained so much politically and financially. But the question is how does Israel put forth a convincing argument to perpetuate this policy of war and militarism. To answer this question Lewis Coser’s theories of how conflict serves to maintain a society functional become useful.
Coser paraphrases Georg Simmel on boundaries set through conflict: "Conflict sets boundaries between groups within a social system by strengthening group consciousness and awareness of separateness, thus establishing the identity of groups within the system (p.87). This is how conflict with an out-group increases internal cohesion. "A state of conflict pulls the members so tightly together and subjects them to such uniform impulse that they either must get completely along with, or completely repel one another. This is the reason why war with the outside is sometimes the last chance for a state ridden with inner antagonisms to overcome these antagonisms, or else to break up definitely." (p.88). Group boundaries are established through conflict with the outside, so that a group defines itself by struggling with other groups. Further, as Simmel adds, outside conflict will strengthen the material cohesion of the group and increases centralization.
Coser states that "conflict makes group members more conscious of their group bonds and increases their participation. Outside conflict has the same effect; it also mobilizes the group's defenses among which is the reaffirmation of their value system against the outside enemy."
To confirm this, Charles Cooley writes: "You can resolve the social order into a great number of co-operative wholes of various sorts, each of which includes conflicting elements within itself, upon which it is imposing some sort of harmony with a view to conflict with other wholes. (Charles Cooley, Social Process, p. 39.)
Additionally Freud observes that "Hatred against a particular person or institution might operate in just the same unifying way, and might call up the same kind of emotional ties as positive attachment." (Sigmund Freud, Psychology and Analysis of the Ego, p. 53.).
Coser sums up by stating: "Indeed, a sect, engaged in intense conflict with the surrounding world of the "damned," may have strong cohesion that each member of the group participates in the exercise of control tasks and that there is no need for centralization of these tasks in the hands of a few."
Charles Tilly: War Making as State Making
Charles Tilly hoped that his theory on war making and state making would "explain the current looming presence of military organization and action throughout the world." Although it would be quite difficult to apply this theory to all nations of the world, certainly a few qualify. The state of Israel, as the reader will come to discover, surely qualifies as one of such states. In fact, it may be a perfect case for Tilly's concept of "the interdependence of war making and state making; war makes state."
According to Tilly, there are two types of protection, a legitimate protector, one that shields the threat, the enemy; and the other, which produces both the danger and the protection. For the latter, the illegitimate protector, is in his words, a 'racketeer.' p. 244. So for some states the claim of protection often qualifies as racketeering:
"To the extent that the threats against which a given government protects its citizens are imaginary or are consequences of its own activities, the government has organized a protection racket. Since governments themselves common only simulate, stimulate, or even fabricate threats of external war and since the repressive and extractive activities of governments often constitute the latest current threats to the livelihoods of their own citizens, many governments operate essentially the same as racketeers." p. 244.
What do states do? Under the general heading of organized violence, the agents of states characteristically carry on four different activities, according to Charles Tilly:
1. War Making: Eliminating rivals outside the territories
2. State Making: Eliminating rivals inside the country
3. Protection: Eliminating the enemies of their clients
4. Extraction: Acquiring the means of carrying out the first three activities--war making, state making, and protection.
The uses of violence produce characteristic forms of organization. War making builds armies, navies, and supporting services. State making produces instruments of surveillance and control within the territory. And protection relies on the organization of war making and state making but adds to it a bureaucratic system by which the protected calls forth the protection that was due. These would be the courts and the representative assembly, in this case the Knesset.
Defining Militarism
Before proceeding with the state of militarism in Israel a precise definition of militarism is necessary. Here the author will use C. Enloe's definition to clarify what is meant by militarism when used in terms of a social context: "
"Militarism is a step-by-step process by which a person or a thing gradually comes to be controlled by the military or comes to depend for its well-being on militaristic ideas. The more militarization transforms an individual or a society, the more that individual or society comes to imagine military needs and militaristic presumptions to be not only valuable but also normal." (p. 3)
C. Lutz pays more attention to militarization of a society and its hegemonic legitimacy on social consequences, when he claims,
"Militarization is simultaneously a discursive process, involving a shift in general societal beliefs and values in ways necessary to legitimate use of force, the organizations of large standing armies and their leaders, and the higher taxes or tribute used to pay for them. Militarization is intimately connected not only to the obvious increase in size of armies and resurgence of militant nationalisms and militant fundamentalisms but also the less visible deformation of human potentials into the hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality." (p. 723.)
It feels as if it is constantly under threat and keeps itself at not a defense mode but an attack mode. It has invaded Lebanon, bombed Syria, and devastated the Gaza Strip through what was called by the Israeli military, "Operation Cast Lead." So by and large political achievement vis-a-vis its neighboring countries will have to come through war and not negotiations. This makes peace through concessions or peace talks quite possibly the one thing that Israeli state does not have in mind, for it thinks of reaching peace through negotiations as not an achievement but a military defeat. Because Israel's military has been tied to its politics, economy, international relations, and even culture.
According to Medeline Adelman, "In Israel boundaries between the military and society are highly permeable even ambiguous." p. 4. It is commonplace to hear Israel referred to as a "nation of soldiers" or a "people in uniform". (p. 5). Militarism necessitates that an “entire society become permeated with and built according to military values and priorities...living in a militarized society obfuscates any presumed distinction between being at war and not at war. In a militarized society, one is always oriented toward war." (p. 7).
According to Ben-Eliezer, "the origins of Israeli militarism lie in the methods and practices which developed in the military realm during the decade leading up to the establishment in 1948 of the Jewish state of Israel" (p. 19).
Early analysis of Israeli militarism emphasized the balance between the military and civil society or Israeli society's ability to shift between crisis and 'routine time.' Israel's constant readiness was coined during 1991 Gulf War: "We have become accustomed to the 'emergency routine'...people are born into it... [And] have never known a routine other than the emergency routine." (p. 266.).
Adelman notes the culture of militarism and how the public in its everyday life deals with various realms of militarism without necessarily being aware. "Public is educated for militarism through a variety of rites (e.g. parades) and sites (e.g. museums) resulting in the naturalization of militarism. This makes it impossible to asses any social or political or economic side of Israeli society without an analysis of the normalization of the militarism that pervades Israel..." and consistent with that conscription is a way to society and not just the military. "Military service is not only a pathway to manhood, friendship, employment, and citizenship but also to political power." p.8.
Military and the Political Economy
an be exposed by comparing its military expenditure as a proportion of its total spending to the expenditure of other countries with active militaries. An analysis by Adva Center (2002) notes that in 1997 the Israeli Defense Force received one-fifth of the central government's expenditure. During the same period, according to Adelman, the U.S. spent 16.3% and the United Kingdom invested 7.1%. In 1998, Israel's known military expenditure was 8.7% of the country's GDP. During the same period, the U.S. military expenditure reached 3.2% of U.S. budget. (p. 1127).
There was an effort made by the Israeli government to change the context of the problem of Palestinians and Israelis by not allowing Palestinians to return to Israel after the independence war. This changed the scope of the conflict to an internal conflict. As Yorum Peri puts it:
"The externalization of the national problem turned the conflict from an internal conflict between Jews and Palestinians living in one political entity, to an inter-state conflict between the state of Israel and its Arab neighbors. It released Israeli society from the need for serious investment in coexistence and in the creation of a socialist society with civil society and minority rights. The alternative to building a socialist society was a nationalistic policy based on military strength and militaristic policy." (p. 230).
Thus the Israeli-Arab conflict was perpetuated, leaving only the military option. And based the
explanation given by Shulmati Carmi and Henry Rosenfeld, the model of Israeli militaristic nationalism
is comprised of three components:
1. Central strength of state and government bureaucracy
2. Foreign Aid, Germany first for compensation of Holocaust and U.S. aid later
3. Militarism as main policy of defense of state interests, and the preoccupation with military superiority and war as the main regional politics. (p. 12).
According to Shimshon Bichler, dominant economic forces are defense contractors. So there is a connection between the structural changes in the market, and the increase in defense spending. In Israel a separation developed between big economy which included six main holding companions with a high degree of unity and homogeneity, and that of the small economy, the disunited sector, whose gains and investments are decentralized. Since 1957, according to Bichler, large groups of the dominant capital or big economy have been performing in a manner clearly contrary to the rest of the business sector or the small economy. It is almost the same process as their counterparts in the U.S., moving to high activity in defense trade and development. This has resulted in the growth of the national defense expenditure. (Shimshon Bichler, The Political Economy of Defense Expenditure in Israel. Doctoral Dissertation, The Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem , Jerusalem 1991, in Carmi. p. 33.
According to Eliezer, most studies tend to focus on the army's integrative mission, ignoring its instrumental role of wielding the means of organized violence.
"The question that should be asked is whether it makes sense to view the nation-in-arms as a functional mechanism for avoiding military coups, as a response to needs of survival, or as a means of modernizing; perhaps it should be seen as a political means that conscious political actors use to legitimize the idea of solving political problems by military means through the attempt to make the business of the military the preoccupation and concern of the entire nations." (266).
An example of the cultural legitimation of construction of nation-in-arms is when "Mapam (left wing opposition party) opposed a traditional army in the Knesset and argued that such an army would produce a militaristic technocrat elite estranged from the nation's needs. As an alternative, Mapam proposed a militia strongly resembling the forces of the pre-state period that would draw its strength from the people, not the state bureaucratic apparatus that operated by law and fiat." (270).
Eliezer: The Israeli Defense Force stated in the beginning in 1950:
"the army's help...will teach the new immigrant that the army and the uniform he sees are in fact his...the army's help is further proof that the soldier is really right-hand of the civilian." So the army was not recognized as its normative function, an instrument of violence in Israel, but had received a civil image of an intimate friendly force. This was reflected in news papers with article with titles like "Soldiers Take Good Care of the Kids," "Female Soldiers Teach Hebrew," etc.
The army was involved in civilian tasks, just as the new immigrant, would later play a role in the military...A four-tier military was created: a career army, as well as a regular army, the reserves, and the border settlements.
In 1955, Ben-Gurion declared that "security is not possible without immigration...security means settlements...the conquest of the sea and air. Security is economic independence, it means fostering research and scientific ability...voluntarism of the population for difficult and dangerous missions." (Knesset Protokol, Nov. 1955) in Eliezer p. 276.
An effort was deliberately made to put Israel in permanent state of fighting the enemy. This was specifically the work of chief of staff, Yigael Yadin in 1952. His idea was a "nation in arms." The mass maneuvers blurred the distinction between two types of time: Peace and war.
Eliezer examines the way in which the state of Israel constructed an ethnic population into a fighting nation, a nation in arms. This is how Ben-Gurion put in 1955: "I have been a Zionist all my life and I do not deny the existence of Israel, heaven forbid...but...even the English nation was not a nation...but was composed of different tribes...fighting another. And only after a development of hundreds of years did they become a nation...we do not have hundreds of years, and without the installment of the army...we will not soon be a nation...we must guide the progress of history, accelerate it, direct it,...
"Like it or not, ours is militaristic society par excellence. This militarism is the central organizing principle around which Israeli society revolves, works, determines its boundaries, its identity and the accepted rules of the game." Quoted in Baruch Kmmerling.
So militaristic thinking has become the unreflective taken-for-granted state of mind that pervades Israel's civil institution. According to Michael Feige.
In 1956, according to Eliezer, "Ben-Gurion in a military ceremony said the soldiers had "stretched out a hand to King Solomon" and that the occupied areas would become part of Israel, part of "the Third Jewish Kingdom." the message was replete with biblical expressions and images, including a quotation from the Song of the Sea, which warns other nations that Israel is strong and triumphant because the Lord is with them. Thus, the nation's past, or its interpretation of the past, was also mobilized in order to justify war and conquest. (p. 283).
Therefore, Israel, as an ethnic population was built as a nation in constant war which has had to protect itself militarily to the unknown future. It has truly been, based on this notion, a nation-in-arms. This constitutes Israel as a nation to be seen as a form of militaristic body characterized by the attempt to turn the affairs of the military and the imminence of war into the business of the whole population, making them the nation's occupation and concern.(Eliezer p. 283). Israel is a nation-in-arms as a nation in which the population was constructed as a fighting nation, not for the sake of a liberal democracy but for the purpose of war.
Israel is not a country of a high degree of manpower mobilized for war but a nation-in-arms as a mechanism composed of both rational and spiritual elements. This diminishes the line between civilian and military institutions making them merge into each other as one solidified entity. So the business of war becomes something inherent with the identity of the country as something completely normal. Through this rationale, according to Eliezer, "a cultural condition is created where war is legitimate and necessary." (284).
In Israel there are social institutions "that are located on the seam between the civil and the military and function to fuse the two spheres into one entity." One such institution is the "Galei Zahal, a radio station staffed by both the civilians and soldiers; voluntary associations , like the Civil Guard that de-emphasize the difference between the soldier and the citizen and between the civilian support and military's frontline; and Keren Libi, a fund for raising money from the public for the army. (284).
Although there have been some changes in the past few years, one could still find many more examples in Israel of social institutions and arrangements that contribute to a situation in which the entire nation is preoccupied with matters pertaining to the military--organized means of violence-- and places this preoccupation at its center. "Israel's reserve system is not just an example of the country's innovation; it is also catalyst for it. Because hierarchy is naturally diminished when taxi drivers can command millionaires and twenty-three-year olds can train their uncles, the reserve system helps to reinforce that chaotic, antihierarchical ethos that can be found in every aspect of Israeli society, from war room to classroom to boardroom." (p. 50)
In Israel, one's academic post is somehow less important than the military past. One of the questions asked in every job interview is, where did you serve in the army? (p. 69).
Conclusion:
Given the state of affairs in Israel and its militarization as the only way to survive politically once can come to the conclusion that a viable peaceful coexistence between Israel and Palestine is close to impossible. Will there be peace between the two states or will this war perpetuate into the far future? Here I have demonstrated that since militarization and war is the only alternative for the current state of Israel leaving peace negotiations in the hands of the state is akin to a perpetual state of war. Therefore, peace will only come with a complete change of the state by the Israeli population. It will be up to the people of Israel in a direct manner, to do an overhaul of the state and force peace through a new set of rules; rules that the new state will have to abide by. As Yagil Levy (2011) puts it: "The public acts as a constraint on elites who would otherwise be more willing to use force. Politicians and commanders internalize these sentiments and adjust the military to function in accordance with these attitudes in a way that may increase the thresholds for the use of violence." (Levy, p. 69).
"Your beloved Israel is addicted. It is addicted to occupation and aggression, and someone has to wean it from these addictions. Like any other junkie, it is incapable of helping itself. Thus the job falls to you."
The new arms deal between the U.S. and Israel to provide 20 new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets is well in line with a policy that has continued for decades. It depicts an important aspect of not just American foreign policy but more related to this paper Israel's fundamental need for militarism. This $2.75 billion deal is one of the largest arms deals between U.S. and Israel. According to Stephen Zunes, this is the "first part of a series of U.S. tax payer--funded arms transfers to Israel that is expected to total more than $30 billion over the next decade." This is while the 1976, Symington Amendment restricts U.S. military support for governments which develop nuclear weapons.
Israel has both a major domestic arms industry and an existing military force for more capable and powerful than any conceivable combination of opposing forces. If the real issue is to provide adequate support for Israeli defense, U.S. would not promise $3 billion in additional military aid. United States would simply promise to maintain military assistance to guarantee Israel's security needs. This would then decline if the peace process moves forward. Therefore, Israel's actual security and defense needs do not seem to be the problem.
Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book, Democracy in American, argues that: "War doesn't always give over democratic communities to military government, but it must invariably and immeasurably increase the powers of civil government; it must almost compulsorily concentrate the direction of all men and the management of all things in the hands of administration." There is however, quite a different trend for the past few years. As Peri puts it: "the claim that Israeli society is militaristic is being raised at a time when Israel is undergoing a process of demilitarization." (p. 14).
Although there have appeared stronger opposition to militarism and militarization of Israeli society, there does not seem to exist a consistent demilitarizing trend. Military expenditure has decreased to from 8.8% to 7.3% in a period of five years, from 2003 to 2008. So while the trend of militarization is on a decline the concept of the enemy and national security remain intact.
Recently there has been a wave of protest against Netanyahu and his government all over Israel. These protests have not only questioned the policies of the state toward Palestinians but also the economic plans followed by the Netanyahu. According to an article in the Ha'aretz, the protests transfer the center of power from the politicians to the public and for the first time the public is addressing social issues and not security, state, and the army. As Gideon Levy observes in this article, Netanyahu's government and "the entire political system are wobbling because those bastards changed the rules. Slinging mud at the protest, proposing empty solutions, heating up the conflict with the Palestinians and the security issue, all these are ploys for the survival of Benjamin Netanyahu and his government." (Gideon Levy, in Ha'aretz.com July 31, 2011).
Reference
Yagil Levy, "How Casualty Sensitivity Affects Civilian Control: The Israeli Experience," International Studies Perspectives, Vol 12, Issue 1, Feb. 2011, p. 69.
Uri Ben-Aliezer, "A Nation-in-Arms: State, Nation, and Militarism in Isreal's First Years," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.37, No. 2, (Apr. 1995), pp. 264-285.
Baruk Kimmerling, The Interrupted System: Israeli Civilian in War and Routine, (New Brunswick, NJ: 1985).
Charles Tilly, "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime," in Power: A Critical Reader, ed. Daniel Egan and Levon Chorbajian, New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc. 2005.
C. Enloe, 2000, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives, Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. p. 3.
C. Lutz, 2002, Making War at Home in the United States: Militarization and the Current Crisis. American Anthropologist, No.104.
Y. Beilin, 1992. Israel: A Concise History. NY: St. Martin Press.
Yorum Peri, "The Radical Social Scientists and Israeli Militarism," Israel Studies, 2, Sep. 30, 1996.
Dan Senor and Saul Singer, 2009. Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle, NY: Twelve Hatchette Book Group.
Shulmati Carmi and Henry Rosenfeld, "The Emergence of Nationalistic Militarism in Israel," International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 3 (1), 1989.
Gideon Levy, "Dear American Jews, If you Love Israel--Criticize it," Ha aretz, Nov. 17, 2010.
Stephen Zunes, "New Arms Deal to Israel Stakes Militarism," Uruknet.info, Nov. 10, 2010.
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