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Manufacturing consent for war is important, news at 11. Snark aside, it's getting harder to generate moral high ground to maintain the facade of LIO supremecy.

Manufacturing consent for war is important, news at 11. Snark aside, it's getting harder to generate moral high ground to maintain the facade of LIO supremecy. The problem with modern American imperialism (and European colonialism) is it's hard to sell to your (multicultural) people we need to to sacrifice blood and treasure to remove/occupy bad/inferior people on the other side of the world. More after decades of mass media recognizing you're actually sacrificing blood and treasure to collateral damage a bunch of civilians. More so when the spoils of war seems meagre relative to cost, and all the resources prosecuting one could have been focused on domestic serenity. Clausewitz (mostly) lived in a context of fighting for survival/dominance against neighbours, which I guess is apt for RU/UK, ISR/GAZA discussed in this article but the actual belligerants in either war are less sustained by morality / or need moral cover as realist interest. Who needs moral cover is however their sponsors, and really we're talking about US+co who needs to convince constitutents of the moral cause to support proxy wars, instead of just admitting: we get to cripple RU by sacrificing UKR, or keeping MENA influence is worth starving and killing tons of kids.

intensevaulter 1y ago
Are we now seeing belligerents changing military strategies to ones that will make manufacturing consent difficult? As in, traditionally adopting tactics that lead to civilian casualties is a trade-off between increased effectiveness and damage to the populous. However can we say that now both aspects are positive because sympathetic victimhood makes it difficult to support a proxy war? Is this the way both fronts are fought at once in modern war?
- maxglute 1y ago
  Are you asking if deliberately dialing up collateral damage to make politically supporting proxy wars more difficult? I think that has always happened, i.e. battle of shanghai when chinese fought japanese in international quarters to influence global sentiment. TBH I don't know how well that works as primary effect, most don't care enough to object to proxy wars unless it effects their material conditions, as long as they're not suffering direct casualties hence US optmize force structure to reduce casualities for direct interventions. Every political structure pretty good at placating restive antiwar voices by now, i.e. GOTW lasted forever despite protests, and GAZA could too. The most vocal reason plebs repeat for pulling UKR support is strategic stockpile/$$$. Arguably IMO same with GOTW, all the protests didn't matter until planners realized COIN was taking too much resource from highend IndoPac fight (China). TLDR sympathetic victim hood is a wedge that raises costs of manufacturing consent. But at end of the day it's actual, material and strategic costs that change support. And yes while modern media increase velocity and volume of dead baby pictures, what we see is countries would rather burn their reputation / moral standing first.

intensevaulter 1y ago

Are we now seeing belligerents changing military strategies to ones that will make manufacturing consent difficult? As in, traditionally adopting tactics that lead to civilian casualties is a trade-off between increased effectiveness and damage to the populous. However can we say that now both aspects are positive because sympathetic victimhood makes it difficult to support a proxy war? Is this the way both fronts are fought at once in modern war?

maxglute 1y ago
Are you asking if deliberately dialing up collateral damage to make politically supporting proxy wars more difficult? I think that has always happened, i.e. battle of shanghai when chinese fought japanese in international quarters to influence global sentiment. TBH I don't know how well that works as primary effect, most don't care enough to object to proxy wars unless it effects their material conditions, as long as they're not suffering direct casualties hence US optmize force structure to reduce casualities for direct interventions. Every political structure pretty good at placating restive antiwar voices by now, i.e. GOTW lasted forever despite protests, and GAZA could too. The most vocal reason plebs repeat for pulling UKR support is strategic stockpile/$$$. Arguably IMO same with GOTW, all the protests didn't matter until planners realized COIN was taking too much resource from highend IndoPac fight (China). TLDR sympathetic victim hood is a wedge that raises costs of manufacturing consent. But at end of the day it's actual, material and strategic costs that change support. And yes while modern media increase velocity and volume of dead baby pictures, what we see is countries would rather burn their reputation / moral standing first.