Dave Young - Thesis

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Discipline and obedience are inextricable from the history of the military institution, to the point where both seem absolutely necessary in order for it to function. Like the other noted disciplinary institutions that formulate a society - the prison, the school, the factory, the church - the military both creates and mirrors a code of behaviour according to a wider ideology defined by an authority. In the factory, the ideology is defined by the industrialist, in the church, the ideology is defined by the Papacy, and in the military, it is defined by the head of state. In this text, there will be an exclusive focus on the military institution, asking how its modern technologies of control relate to wider socio-political trends in the information age.

The text begins by looking at the traditional army as a cybernetic system, exploring how the hierarchical structures and language that forms the basis for the military insitution can be used to maintain a homeostatic (that is, an equilibirum) state of obedience. This point is expanded through an analysis of the language and protocol outlined in a US military document titled Procedure for Military Executions, dated from 1947, and asking if the formulation of a military vernacular assists in the establishment of a precedent of control, and thus becomes a facilitation of obedience. In the latter half of the text, there is an exploration of the feedback loops that operate between the military and society, namely this phenomenon of creation and mirroring: how the military creates new disciplinary technologies that are then introduced to society, and how it mirrors external disciplinary technologies to become an integral part of the military institution. In the control society, itself formed out of technologies either internally developed or heavily funded by the US Department of Defense during the Cold War, this feedback is particularly apparent, and will be explored in detail in the latter half of the text through an examination of the US Military’s covert Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (also referred to as UAV, or drone) campaign in the Middle East.

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The notion of a disciplinary methodology is inextricably linked with military strategy throughout recorded history, featuring in the works of countless scholars from Ancient China to the modern era. Protocols, laws, penal codes, and various other procedural/judicial systems have formed the basis for military assemblies throughout history. One of the most influential European publications that deals with the topic is Niccolo Machiavelli's The Art of War. In Christopher Lynch's introduction to his translation of the text, he emphasises Machiavelli's belief that the process of recruitment is key to having a successful army. A military unit should be populated by soldiers who go to war for patriotic reasons, and who remain obedient to the upper strata of the military hierarchy out of fear. This system of control is implemented from the very beginning of the conscription process – the soldiers are selected by the prince ('prince' in this case meaning a royalist or republican figure of authority), rather than the army being formed out of volunteers or a total conscription policy. This relates to Machiavelli's theory of the importance of a non-professional military - as Lynch states in his introduction: “Machiavelli is entirely averse to any form of military professionalism, for professionals, like mercenaries, are presumed to be motivated by the desire for personal profit.” (2005: xxi) J.G.A. Pocock, writing in his book The Machiavellian Moment, elaborates on how the professional mercenary can become a dangerous disruption to the established hierarchy: “Because the citizen has his own place in the body politic, he will understand that the war is being fought to preserve it; a mercenary with no home but the camp may become the instrument of tyranny over the city he was hired to defend.” (Pocock, 1975: 200-201) Thus, Machiavelli's selected conscription system breeds obedience to a political authority rather than an economic authority, through the establishment of the citizen-soldier as a subordinate of the prince. The citizen's consent should neither be forced, nor entirely willing, but in any case given out of fear and respect for the prince.

But why have the questions of obedience and disciplinary methodologies dominated military discourse since antiquity? We can say that in order to fight a war (especially before the age of cyberwarfare) a soldier must place himself in the physical space of combat – i.e. the 'theatre' of war. Such a space is, by definition, a dangerous place where the soldier has to face the possibility of serious injury – if not death. Consequently, to ensure a soldier's loyal participation in a war, his or her belief in the disciplinary system and ability to achieve the end-goal has to surpass the basic instinctual desire for self-preservation. Lynch writes: "At the basis of a soldier's military service is an ambivalence of will that is brought about by, on the one hand, his aversion to present pain, and, on the other hand, his fear of the prince's disdain." (ibid: 203) In a conscription system such as the type Machiavelli promoted, many civil-soldiers (excluding the professional mercenaries of Machiavelli's time, for example) fight a war reluctantly, and that this reluctance should be manipulated to maintain a state of obedience.

War has historically been a vast collaborative effort, won through the careful management of territorial tactics, weapons technologies, and scale of soldiers and resources. The traditional brute-force view of military conflict follows that a larger army has a greater chance of overthrowing a smaller-scaled opponent. To think of an army as a cybernetic system comprised of generators and receivers of information, we must remember that a larger population increases the likelihood for this information to become disorganised. A message (i.e. a military order) must be directed and communicated to its recipients in a functional manner so that its containing information retains a state of organisation as it is broadcast downward through the military ranks.

To contextualise this metaphor of an army as a cybernetic system, we must briefly explore the research of Norbert Wiener during the Second World War. While stationed at MIT in the early 1940s, Norbert Wiener began work on an anti-aircraft gun he called the AA Predictor, which would assist its human operator's accuracy by estimating the flight trajectory of the target aircraft. In order to do this, Wiener worked with the concept of feedback: that is, when the output of a system modulates its own input. He describes its implementation in his book Cybernetics: Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine: “[...] when we desire a motion to follow a given pattern the difference between this pattern and the actually performed motion is used as a new input to cause the part regulated to move in such a way as to bring its motion closed to that given by the pattern.” (Wiener, 1965: 6-7) As Wiener further expanded his research of feedback loops into a science he called Cybernetics, the AA Predictor experiment grew to have greater implications. It made Wiener re-conceptualise his view of the human: the complexity of human behaviour became information, governed by measurable feedback loops and statistical probability, and thus readily controllable and perhaps even predictable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was precisely these qualities that made cybernetics a valuable tactical science for the US Cold War strategists.

Wiener, in his book The Human Use of Human Beings, states: “Indeed, it is possible to treat sets of messages as having an entropy like sets of states of the external world. Just as entropy is a measure of disorganization, the information carried by a set of messages is a measure of organization.” (Wiener, 1989: 21) To apply Wiener's theories of communication to a military system, we can posit that the organisation of information is maintained through its medium of transmission: the hierarchy of military ranks. Obedience is encoded in the structure of a message's transmission and the military vernacular. A message might be sent from an 'authority', and referred to as an 'order' or a 'directive' and regard a 'duty' or a 'designation', and so on. So, to think of a given 'order' being transmitted through the military ranks, with each rank deferring power to the rank directly above and broadcasting directly below, we are reminded of McLuhan's aphorism: “the medium is the message.” This language and transmission structure is clearly apparent in almost any US Army pamphlet (one of which will be explored in depth below) but the alternative seems to suggest that, without a clearly defined communications hierarchy, the entropic potential of an army as a social system increases with respect to its population.

The military vernacular within procedural pamphlets published by the US Army already encodes a degree of obedience through its selective vocabulary and emphasis on protocol as an automative mechanism. Further to its integration within the systems of communication, obedience is also encoded within the traditions and rituals that form the foundation of military service, with capital punishment being an obvious example. Various execution methods have been employed throughout the history of armed conflict, although only a small number – those that we still may consider to be somewhat 'humane' – survive as modern forms of capital punishment. The firing squad, now a mostly antiquated form of execution in the developed world, is emblematic of how morality can be reprogrammed through protocol and its logic of rules and rituals.

To analyse a specific example, the Procedure for Military Exectutions, pamphlet number 27-4, published by the US Army in December published in 1947 (albeit containing a lot of material from a similar 1944 document), outlines the operational protocol informed by both legal, medical and military-traditional influences to be followed when a death sentence is imposed on a prisoner. The pamphlet details two forms of military capital punishment: execution by musketry (i.e. the firing squad), and execution by hanging. In Section 1, titled General, there are a series of 12 paragraphs that detail the protocol to be followed, common to both forms of execution. (US Dept. Army, 1947: 1-4) This document is particularly interesting when cross-referenced with its actual purpose: most of those who were executed according to its protocol were in fact US soldiers, for serious crimes committed during the second world war.

The first paragraph, subheaded Authority, immediately defines a hierarchical process. It states that the court-martial is the designator of the prisoner's sentence and the form of execution. The second paragraph, Time and Place (a), describes that the conditions of the execution must be decided by the authority appointed by the court-martial. Under (b), a hierarchy is described: it states the the designated officer in control of the execution will “designate at the earliest opportunity another time or place” (ibid) to proceed with the execution, in the event that the initial time and place is impracticable. The third paragraph, Delegation of Authority, further expands the hierarchy to include a subordinate officer, who the officer may delegate the responsibility of the execution to. The subordinate officer is “under the direct control of the delegating authority” and “will be duly and officially named by an order of the officer”. (ibid: 1)

In the events of a prisoner's suspected Insanity or Pregnancy (paragraphs four and five respectively), the execution will be stayed to allowed a board to convene and assess the prisoner, referring to the Adjutant General or President if practicable.

In paragraph six, titled Witnesses, the pamphlet provides a rigorous set of guidelines regarding the presence of military or civilian witnesses. The designated officer must prescribe “whether the execution will be public or private, [and] rules of secrecy as to time, place”. (US Dept. Army, 1947: 2) This paragraph also prescribes a specific protocol for military observers: the “troops will be paraded and formed into the three sides of a hollow rectangle, facing inward and towards the site on which the prisoner is to be placed.” (ibid) It also states that no photographs are permitted, unless for official documentary purposes, that “no demonstrations will be tolerated”, and that the “environs of the place of execution will be closely and securely guarded.” (ibid) Furthermore, troops must stand to attention until the 'ceremony' has concluded.

It is worth contrasting the above with Michel Foucault's descriptions of capital punishment in his book Discipline and Punish. As detailed in the protocol above, Foucault's examples also incorporate strong visual displays of power, manifested in the uniform, symbolic gestures, and weapons handled by the soldiers around the site of execution. Foucault talks about the dual-effects of their presence. Firstly, they assist in the control of the crowds of civilian witnesses (in the case of a public ceremony), and could intervene in the case of an attempted escape or other such disturbance. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, the soldiers act as representatives of authority, and in their full performative presence, they come to symbolise the “physical, material and awesome force of the sovereign deployed there.” (Foucault, 1995: 50) Foucault writes: “[the soldiers' presence] was also a reminder that every crime constituted as it were a rebellion against the law and that the criminal was an enemy of the prince.” (ibid) The soldiers, being under the orders of the sovereign, remind all that the execution is being undertaken from the peak of the hierarchy.

Paragraph seven defines the protocol for Multiple Executions, stating prisoners can be executed simultaneously or in succession. In the case of multiple simultaneous executions by musketry, a “separate execution party will be provided for each of the prisoners”, with each prisoner “placed in line at an interval of ten paces.” (ibid) Paragraph eight describes the Escort: mounted, dismounted, or motorised. In paragraphs nine through eleven, guidelines relating to the provision of a Chaplain, Medical Officer, and Interpreter are described.

The final paragraph, with subsections a to d, is titled Miscellaneous and details extra protocol to be followed before the execution. It states that the prisoner must be notified of the time of execution at least 24 hours beforehand, informed by the designated officer with a chaplain present. Next of kin must also be notified where possible, providing an opportunity for claiming the body post-execution. Subsection c indicates that “all decorations, insignia, or other evidences of membership therein” must be removed from the regulation uniform of US Army soldiers who are sentenced to death. Soldiers of a foreign army may retain their military badges, insignias, etc on their uniform, while “a prisoner not within the foregoing categories may be dressed in any clothing available.” (ibid: 4) The final subsection of the 12th paragraph states that the designated officer should, if practicable, “approve any reasonable request for food, and permission to have in his possession a Bible, a Rosary, or similar religious articles during the execution.” The prisoner should also be provided with writing paper and envelopes, and allowed to write as many letters as they wish. The subsection is finished with the qualification “all letters are subject to censorship and may or may not be forwarded.” (ibid)


Comparing Foucault's analysis of the spectacle of the scaffold with the precise duties outlined in the aforementioned 1947 US Army pamphlet highlights some interesting parallels. It is worth noting that in the US Army protocol (as described in paragraphs four and five of the US Army pamphlet), it is ultimately the President's consent for the execution that must be sought in special circumstances.

The pamphlet also describes the protocol of the military escort.

Where both diverge though perhaps illustrates how the morality of capital punishment altered in the 'developed world' in the interim. In Foucault's descriptions of the scaffold, the visibility of the actual torture and/or execution was paramount. Societal discipline, he argues, was formed out of fear of the spectacular public display of punishment. The military execution, on the other hand, is more likely to be kept out of public view. The visual aspects of the ceremony would appear on first glance to have more to do with the discipline and obedience of the soldiers ordered to carry out the execution, rather than the prisoner to be executed. Following the ceremony, there would be no 'enemy' witnesses to fear the punishment. So, why does the military describe such a strict protocol in the aforementioned pamphlet if nobody is watching?


“All these reasons - whether a matter of precaution in particular circumstances or a functional element in the performance of the ritual - made the public execution more than an act of justice; it was a manifestation of force; or rather, it was justice as the physical, material and awesome force of the sovereign deployed there. The ceremony of the public torture and execution displayed for all to see the power relation that gave his force to the law. ” (Foucault, 1995: 50)

It was the effect, in the rites of punishment, of a certain mechanism of power: of a power that not only did not hesitate to exert itself directly on bodies, but was exalted and strenghened by its visible manifestations; of a power that asserted itself as an armed power whose functions of maintaining order were not entirely unconnected with the functions of war; of a power that presented rules and obligations as personal bonds, a breach of which constituted an offense can called for vengeance; of a power for which disobedience was an act of hostility, the first sign of rebellion, which is not in principle different from civil war; of a power that had to demonstrate not why it enforced its laws, but who were its enemies, and what unleashing of force threatened them; of a power which, in the absence of continual supervision, sought a renewal of its effects of its individual manifestations; of a power that was recharged in the ritual display of its reality as 'super-power'. (Foucault, 1995, 57)

<unpack> In this general overview of military execution protocol, we can see a recurrence of words such as 'order', 'duty', 'authority', 'designation', and the establishment of a chain of command. Through the construction of a rigorous protocol-driven method, participation in the execution party becomes a duty - that is, an integral part of military service which all lower-ranked soldiers are obliged to follow without deviation. As the pamphlet moves on to the following two sections (focusing with great detail on Execution by Musketry and Execution by Hanging respectively), tradition and ritualistic protocol becomes increasingly important. The execution becomes a ceremonial event, with highly detailed and specific descriptions pertaining to personnel, physical arrangements of the prisoner(s), and the pieces of music to be played by the military band (if present) at specific times during the ceremony. As the execution follows a strict step-by-step protocol, a soldier's participation in a potentially problematic act is reduced to a ceremonial procedure. </unpack>


In contemporary warfare, networked technologies have allowed for the development of a new type of firing squad that no longer requires the escort, physical assembly, and ceremonial performance of an execution by musketry. In ongoing campaigns focusing on Yemen and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of North Pakistan, the US Military is making unprecedented use of remotely piloted drones such as the Reaper and the Predator to execute alleged terrorists as part of the War of Terror. The increasingly regular use of drones in place of ground troops indicates a radical change in defense policy: control no longer needs to be visualled performed and paraded in order to be powerful. This new type of military power arose out of the possibilities offered by computer and network technologies, beginning in earnest in the early days of the Cold War.

From the beginning of the 20th century, the traditional armies of many industrialised nations were already undergoing major structural changes. The horse was being replaced by the new technologies of the automobile and the tank, the aircraft, and then during the Cold War to a new immaterial vessel. The weapons of war became information, carried through space by an assembly of radio transmissions, computer networks, and satellites. The development of these new technologies of warfare removed the need for the ‘horse’ to carry the corporeal soldier into battle. Instead, they could be situated in a remote bunker, taking decisive action based on information being fed back to the base by an array of sensors, drones, and other strategic transmissions. This ‘evolution’ of the US military structure reflected the deterritorialisation of warfare in the information age, with its primary concepts being redefined as the new network technologies became central to managing Cold War conflicts.

A notable turning point in this technological adaptation is a little-known intelligence operation during the Vietnam war called Operation Igloo White. Aware that the Vietcong were transporting arms from the communist North into South Vietnam, a research and development department at MIT called the JASONS began to develop experimental strategies for disrupting the supply convoys. The idea was to create a network of sensors along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a transport route of strategic importance that ran through the jungles of Laos and Cambodia known to be used by the Vietcong convoys. A variety of sensors were used in the operation: vibration sensors to detect movement of truck convoys, microphones to pick up the speech of the enemy soldiers, and even sensors that could detect the scent of urine. (Edwards, 1996: 3) The sensors were mostly dispersed by air – like seedlings, designed to embed themselves in the ground and appear like small plants, or get caught in the jungle canopy disguised amongst the trees, quietly emitting data streams via radiowaves. The result was a cybernetic jungle, a natural space invaded by micro-computers broadcasting a symbolic representation of their environment.

The network was controlled and observed from a US military command center (the Infiltration Surveillance Center – ISC) hundreds of kilometers to the North West in Nakhom Phanom, Thailand. By analysing the data collected from multiple sensors close to one another, the size of a convoy could be ascertained, the type of vehicles are being used, and their speed and direction. With this information, the soldier would then order an air strike: “The planes’ navigation systems and computers automatically guided them to the “box”, or map grid square, to be attacked. The ISC central computers were also able to control the release of bombs: the pilot might do no more than sit and watch as the invisible jungle below suddenly exploded into flames. In most cases, no American ever actually saw the target at all.” (Edwards, 1996: 4)

Through this remote system, the enemy is replaced by symbols, their behaviour reduced to flows of numbers or a glowing white light on a computer monitor. From the relative safety of their remote windowless bunker, the soldiers in the ISC could make strategic decisions in reaction to the information being fed back to the base. The operation consistently reported very favourable results, boasting the destruction of 35,000 trucks and 10,000 pounds of supplies. These statistics were later revealed to have been vastly exaggerated in order to justify the $1 billion annual operating costs of Igloo White – in fact, the operation was largely a failure, with the Vietcong managing to ‘field a major tank and artillery offensive inside South Vietnam in 1972.’ (Edwards, 1995)

“Do you realize our Navy is now smaller than any time since 1917?” (Mitt Romney, third US Presidential Debate, as quoted in Estes, 2012) On the 22nd October, the third and final 2012 US presidential debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney was viewed on television by almost 60 million Americans, with many more all over the world following online and offering their commentary on social media sites. (Nielsen Wire, 2012) The two previous debates had offered moments of political surrealism, with Romney declaring his love for Sesame Street’s Big Bird followed by the bizarre turn of phrase “binders full of women” in the second debate. The supposed subject was to be foreign policy, although Obama’s US military policies were drawn into the spotlight on numerous occasions, eventually giving rise to a minor highlight of what was generally deemed a dull debate. At one point, Romney pressed Obama on planned cuts to the US military budget. Obama replied: “You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.” (Estes, 2012)

The noise that followed Obama’s wry comment drowned out his intended point that tells us a lot about the future role of technology and warfare. In January 2012, Obama announced the National Defense Review, stating that he was planning to begin a process of cutting $500bn from the Pentagon’s budget over the following ten years. (BBC News, 2012) The Pentagon’s “leaner” armed forces will rely on far fewer ground troops, but will use technologies such as drones to make up the shortfall. (Alexander and Wolf, 2012)

<begin discussion contemporary drone networks />

“Not all computers are created equal: whoever own the biggest computer on an open network gets to outcalculate everybody else and become the spymaster who can organise everyone else to their advantage” (Lanier, 2013) http://vimeo.com/61418990

Biblio

Articles

Books

  • Barbrook, Richard Imaginary Futures (2005)
  • Carey, John The Faber Book of Utopias (1999) Faber and Faber, London.
  • Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix Anti-Oedipus (2004) Continuum
  • Edwards, Paul N. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (1996) MIT Press, United States.
  • Galison, Peter The Ontology of the Enemy (1994)
  • Galloway, Alexander The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (2007) University of Minnesota Press.
  • Foucault, Michel: Discipline and Punish (1991), Vintage, New York.
  • Karatzogianni, Athina Power, Conflict and Resistance: Social Movements, Networks and Hierarchies (with Andrew Robinson) (2010)
  • Karatzogianni, Athina The Politics of Cyberconflict (with Andrew Robinson) (2010)
  • Machiavelli, Nicollo (trans. Christopher Lynch) The Art of War (2002) University of Chicago Press.
  • Milgram, Stanley Obedience to Authority (1974) Tavistock, UK.
  • Poster, Mark and Savat, David (Editors) Deleuze and New Technology (2009) Edinburgh University Press, UK.
  • Spufford, Francis Red Plenty (2010) Faber and Faber, UK.
  • Wiener, Norbert The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (1988) Da Capo Press.
  • Wiener, Norbert Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1965) MIT Press.

Filmography

Dept of Defense Training Film (MF11-5514) Bugging the Battlefield pt1-2 1969 Defense Department Electronic Eavesdropping Vietnam War http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USwaRygAJaY (Uploaded 03/05/12, accessed 23/10/12)

Dept of Defense Training Film (MF11-5514) Bugging the Battlefield pt2-2 1969 Defense Department Electronic Eavesdropping Vietnam War http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDw0BmdKENA (Uploaded 03/05/12, accessed 23/10/12)

Other

Google Maps U.S. Drone Attacks in Pakistan (2004, 2010) https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=200045091332999095011.00047caa42cb2374421e4&msa=0&ll=31.933517,70.026855&spn=2.713037,5.410767 Created 08/01/12, accessed 25/10/12.

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