Dave Young - Thesis

Discipline and obedience is inextricable from the history of the military institution, to the point where they 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, and so on - 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 capitalist, in the church, the ideology is defined by the Papacy, and so on, but all with the argument that this disciplinary system is necessary in order for society to function according to the ideology of the authority. In this text, there will be an exclusive focus on the military institution, asking how its disciplinary technologies influence and are influenced by wider trends in society. The text begins by looking at an army as a cybernetic system, exploring if the hierarchical structures and language used in the military relate to the concept of homeostasis – a state of balance within a system. 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 vernaular assists in the facilitation of complicity and 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 (commonly referred to as drone) campaign in the Middle East.

The question of discipline in an army is inextricably linked with military strategy throughout recorded history, featuring in the works of countless scholars from Ancient China to the modern era. One of the most influential European publications that deals with the topic is Niccolo Machiavelli's The Art of War. In Christopher Lynch's excellent 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 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.

Why have the questions of obedience and disciplinary methodologies dominated military discourse since antiquity? 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) To add to this, we can also 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. In a conscription system, 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, technology, and scale. The traditional brute-force view of military conflict follows that the larger the army, the better its chances are of winning a battle. That being said, to read an army as a cybernetic system, a greater population of soldiers also increases the dynamism and unpredictability within it. A message (i.e. an 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 throughout the army. Norbert 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) In a military system, 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 line of thought seems to be clear: without a clearly defined communications hierarchy, the entropic potential of an army as a social system increases with respect to its population.

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. For example, the firing squad is emblematic of how morality can be reprogrammed through protocol and its logic of rules and rituals.

To expand on a previous point, 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. To analyse a specific example, the Procedure for Military Exectutions, pamphlet number 27-4, published by the US Army in December 1947, 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)

The first paragraph, subheaded Authority, defines the court-martial as the designator of the prisoner's sentence and the form of execution. The second paragraph, Time and Place (a), is stated to be designated by the authority ordering the execution. 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 designated by the court-martial 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.

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)

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 labour 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.

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 army was already going under 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)