How Could It Be Otherwise?

So they’re selling their stories, and the Brits are peeved, although perhaps not as peeved as yesterday (link—Kevin Drum offers a wry spin here). Let me offer two “on the one hands, one "ironic footnote," one “on the other hand” and an afterthought--

First: these are volunteers, not so? And isn’t this a core problem with a volunteer army? For at least the last couple of hundred years, we have tried to build our armies on models of national pride and some sort of communal loyalty. A volunteer army says (no matter how hard it tries to say otherwise)—at the end of the day it is all about money. We’ll pay you more than you’re getting at home (and if you are lucky, maybe you get out and go to Blackwater). Meanwhile at home, we make much of the fact that there’s no “shared sense of sacrifice” in this war, aside from “support the troops” tee-shirts. But given the framework, how can we expect “sacrifice” on either side?

[Ironic Footnote: It is interesting that while the military moves towards a cash nexus, some of the most successful “private” corporations are those that can build a team spirit, a sense of group loyalty—“balance sheet patriotism,”you might say.]

Second: But it is not just state v. market—states in their own right are in absolute decline. There is hardly a corner of the world where national identity is as strong now as it was 50 years ago. We meet dual nationals, transnational domestic alliances, Chinese restaurants in Manitoba, Black African priests in Ireland. State v. market is one framing narrative. We could just as well speak of state v. warlord, state v. patriarch or state v. (though oddly, this one has more sinister overtones)—state v. “cosmopolitanism.”

But, But, But, But, But: I risk letting myself be misunderstood here. The casual reader could be forgiven for inferring that this is just one more lament for a lost sense of community (“Young folks nowadays…”). It is and it isn’t. Go back 50 years or so to the apogee of the nation-state, and you will recall that it wasn’t such a pretty picture. For bullying arrogance and mind-numbing conformity, there is nothing like national unity. This sense of community may be hard to do without, but it wasn’t much to live with, either.

And an Afterthought: In the end, I wonder how many of the critics are just annoyed that the kids aren’t sharing the wealth.