Nettime diskussion

• To: Nettime
• Subject: Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
• From: Michael H Goldhaber
• Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2008 15:49:43 -0800


Though I have long been an admirer of Saskia Sassen, I don’t find this particular piece to be very well thought out. Cities by their very nature contain large numbers of people in close proximity and always have. This makes and has always made them both possible centers of insurrection and difficult to control or conquer from without. An enemy entering a city either must come close to destroying it and its population or is likely to face endless surprise, sabotage and reprisal from within. That is why, historically, enemies often besieged cities for years (Granada, Leningrad) in attempts to starve them into submission or destroyed them instead of occupying them (as did the Crusaders and Tamerlane) or in advance of occupation as the Soviets did Berlin near the end of World War II and the US did Tokyo.. Cities have also been frequent sites of insurrection, from the Boston Tea party to the Paris Commune, to the Poznan riots, to Budapest in ’56, etc. , etc. .

One thing newish about Iraq, which Sassen cites as an example of new forms is that with current levels of public awareness is it is no longer possible to get away with inflicting the human suffering of a siege or near total destruction of a great city. Also the US invaders paid no attention to the well-known difficulties of conquest, instead expecting to be met with flowers. In the first Gulf war, Bush p?re knew or was advised that Baghdad could not be subdued without giant and presumably unacceptable numbers of casualties. Bush fils would have none of that and plunged in.

Cities today not only have crowds that assure that large numbers can be killed even by a few terrorists but have media to make sure the terrorist attack gets noticed far more widely than would a similar kind of attack in some more isolated locale. The Mumbai attack was very well suited to drawing such attention, partly because Mumbai is a media center, partly because of the Internet, including Twitter, and partly because of the dramatic unfolding of events rather than being one sudden blast. I am not convinced it has much in common with slum dwellers temporarily taking over sections of Rio.
Best,
Michael

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• To: Nettime
• Subject: Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
• From: Saskia Sassen
• Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:45:41 -0500


hi, thanks for the comments. very helpful! and here two comments that might help clarify.(please excuse all the typos. i wrote this at great speed because i wanted to get it out right after i read M.Goldhaber’s comments. I agree with much of what Michael says regarding history of cities, and i accept his scepticism about my new study. it is a bit experimental indeed. but each one of my projects has entailed going out on a wing a bit.

1) I am mostly interested in the modern period, and specifically in the notion of the growth of asymmetric armed conflict and global warming. I wish I could deal with older histories of cities, and city-states. but I can’t/ I am not a historian etc.. Further I am particularly interested in how the civic in this modern period was constructed (the civic is constructed differently in different periods and places).

We might use public infrastructures and the welfare state as a standing for the fuzzy concept "the civic." A working public health or transport system has to override the little and bid differences that feed racisms, intolerances etc. So it can be a sort of model. My question then is: does that still work today? and my second question is: are there challenges today that are larger than our differences of religion, race, and the hatreds these can produce. (For instance, global warming will hit coastal cities hard and if we are going to be serious about reducing the damage, we wil have to work at it together, no matter our differences; or, a kind of denationalized culture we see emerge in larger cities is allowing young people to experience life and their surroundings in far less racializing and gendered ways than older generations. this may not be a majority culture, but it is an emergent powerful trend.

2) It has been my practice to study the x not in terms of the characteristics of the x, but also, and often especially, in terms of the non-x conditions and forces within which that x is embedded or from which it arises. So, with Mumbai, that means I do not simply want to think of Mumbai in terms of the old and new terrorisms, and religious hatreds that have marked the region. that is part of it, very importantly, it marks the specificity of that attack. But does it explain in ways that open up the x. I want to consider the possibility that we are dealing with deeper systemic shifts, and that cities and non-asymmetric conflicts capture something, make something legible about those deeper transformations. ((on the x vs non-x approach, i elaborate in ch 1 of my Territory, Authority, Rights book)

thanks for the chance to think a bit more about this new project of mine.

saskia

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• To: Nettime
• Subject: Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
• From: t byfield
• Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 02:16:27 -0500


Interesting.

It isn’t hard to see how and why it’s tempting to hypostatize concepts like "war" and "city," but it’d be wise to treat each one skeptically, and even more so in relation to each other. And one needn’t reach very far back in history at all to come up with absolute contrasts. These contrasts have many origins: the actual and theorized relationships between cities and their surroundings, the need for invading forces to establish strongholds close enough to support command and logistics needs, the various technical capacities of forces in conflict (of which there are, as often as not, many), styles of warfare that are much more complex than the simplistic dichotomy of a/symmetrical warfare, efforts to manipulate media (regional, global, sympathetic, etc), and so on.

Take, for example, the Vietnam War. Films of American bombers dropping bombs in pairs seemingly at random across the Viet countryside have become a generic symbol of a futile effort to "bomb them back into the stone age" or "turn the country into a parking lot" - two strikingly different historical vectors, yes? But this bombing wasn’t random in some euphemistic sense of the term akin to "random violence," rather, it was *systematically random*: the purpose of this approach to bombing, which left deep craters, was to disrupt rural water tables and thereby drain rice paddies. This, in conjunction with chemical warfare (Agent Orange is well-known, Agent Blue, Agent White and others less so) and armored bulldozers formed the doctrine of "Landscape Management": an effort to deny the Viet Cong any and every form of cover - physical, social, nutritional - *in order to urbanize them*. (If you’re doing serious research on this, I recommend reading the pithy works of Viet strategists, like Vo Nguyen Giap’s _People’s War Against U.S. Aeronaval War, which the Viets, being communists, thoughtfully translated into English.)

It should be noted that this approach was based on the experiences American forces during the close of WW2 and the Korean War, both of which involved extensive sociological studies - about the effects of aerial bombing on urban centers, variations in food supplies, etc. In fact, one of the striking things about the wars the US is currently engaged in is how much the Pentagon seems to have forgotten. None of this theory is evident in its ’strategies’ now, and in the recent brouhaha over its engagement with the social sciences, I didn’t see a single reference to the centrality of these disciplines in shaping warfare, occupation, and counterinsurgency strategies. By the same token, I don’t see how one could address "war" and "cities" without without explicitly considering these theoretical and institutional histories, if only because invading forces carry with them their own notions of what "civic" does and doesn’t mean.

Now contrast Vietnam with what happened to Grozny just thirty years later, where, after less than two months of full-scale warfare, Russian forces announced that anyone who remained "will be considered terrorists and bandits and will be destroyed by artillery and aviation."

Before

After

Or contrast that with Beirut. Sarajevo. Kigali. Fallujah. Jaffna. The list goes on and on, sadly. They’re all "cities," but it’s hard to see how one could generalize about their dynamics in conditions in conflict
— particularly in synchronous, categorical terms, which would seem to be the affirmative claim made if one avoids taking longer-term history into account. And, by a similar token, "war" is a very useful category where and when peace prevails, just as "peace" is useful in the context of war; but these categories aren’t very good at articulating themselves.
Cheers,
T

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• To: Nettime
• Subject: Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
• From: "Calin Dan"
• Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 11:46:05 +0100


Although I find little entertainment in conspiracy theories, I cannot stop noticing that what prevails in the end of all those gory conflicts is the economics of reconstruction.

From the afore-mentioned Grozny, to the long-tested Beirut, to the very close to my direct experience Bucharest, one can make a long list of cities that miraculously came back from rubble - a clear sign of their indomitable vitality. Or so they say. Little (to my knowledge at least) has been written about the direct involvement of the secret services (the very same institutions playing an active role in the destruction process), old and new, retired and/or active, in the reconstruction, through joint ventures, off-shore companies, government contracts a.s.o. All sides previously involved in the conflict seem to shake hands in the phase of deal making for mending the past.

Now, while reconstruction, compromise, deals closed in the rarefied high zones of power are part of what we are used to perceive as "normality", one cannot stop wondering where does strategic decision stop in (urban) warfare, and where projections for future business opportunities are starting to influence the way in which armed conflicts are conducted.

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• To: Nettime
• Subject: Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
• From: Saskia Sassen
• Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:25:45 -0500


i agree - my starting point, when i try to open a field is: what are we trying to name when we use the term: globalization, citizenship, the nationale, etc.
The project i am developing now asks this about terms like "war" and "city."

both are words deeply embedded in particular, albeit globally present, histories. Further, the current instances we have been describing here, resist the conventional meanings: so it is easy to use terms such as terrorism becasue this is a war that does not fit war as in world war 2 (though of course, there were lots of instances that fit into today’s "terrorism" bit.
Question then is whether these current situations are anomalous (which i think is the easiest way out of a problematic, and I resist going that way), or become heuristic (in the sense of producing knowledge about the terms themselves: war and city.

saskia

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• To: Nettime
• Subject: Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
• From: Felix Stalder
• Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 14:37:08 +0100


It strikes me that the issue is perhaps less city vs open field, but the difference between the function of cities in conventional conflict (state vs state) and asymmetric conflicts which the events in Mumbai were a part of.
The main difference relates to the goals pursued through these conflicts. In the first case, cities are attractive, as Ted noted, because they constitute the center of administration necessary to take over in order to govern the country as a whole. In the latter, cities, or more precisely particular segments of (inter)national significance, constitute what some theorists call "systempunkt", the critical node that can destabilize the entire system.

Why should the system be destabilized? Not in order to take it over. Al- Qaeda did not plan to occupy the US after 9/11. Rather, the goal seems to be affect the overall dynamics of the system, either in the terms of weakening the state so the withdraws from certain areas / functions, or to force the state to over-react. In Mumbai, it seems that the goal was the latter, with the attacks occurring shortly before elections and in the context of a real attempt of both governments to ease hostilities between Pakistan and India. If the elections now shift to the nationalist right and the relations between the countries deteroritate, the attacks will have been successful. If not, they will have failed.

In a way, it’s violent, large-scale system’s hacking, ie. use the resources of the system to make it do something that is counter to its stated goals.

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• To: Nettime
• Subject: Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
• From: mazzetta
• Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:11:45 +0100


I think, dealing with wars, that we’re seeing anything anomalous. Following changes in western warfare, the frontline disappeared well before the appearance of 21th century "terrorism", this has driven changes in fights much more than any brainstorming on how to wage war against an overwhelming power.

Most, i cannot see main differences between the so-called islamic terrorism and others fightings formerly seen in action. As different palestinian approaches weren’t so original, we can consider qaeda-style actions as non-original at all. Just remember many national resistances in the 20th century and you’ll find many examples that suggest we’re not seeing nothing new or original. Suicide attack tactics too are not new, nor original. Just note, then, that despite a billion of potential "terrorists", the attacks as in Mumbai, London or 9/11, have resulted in a very small number, that is to say that there cannot be a broad consensus on this kind of operation, nor lots of people ready and trained to do it.
More, 9/11 has been a unicum in its magnitude, but it was an upgrading of former attempt at WTC on 1993.Other terrorist attacks waged by "islamist", also had nothing more than an ordinary Columbine or an Oklahoma bombing. Nothing new, nothing "ethnic".

What is new, or at least evolving, is what martin Shaw defines "The new western way of war", the transition from the industrial warfare against national actors, to a modern range of conflicts against groups or enemies. We didn’t have a war ’against’ Iraq or Afghanistan, but wars chasing small enemy elites. The western way of war is played on three main battlefields, adding to the military one those represented by media and economy. You can wage a framed limited war, when you win public opinion and when you do not upset your economy waging war.

Winning the military confrontation was not enough for USA, when it’s been defeated by the collaps of its poor propaganda, Bush’ administration knew it had lost the war despite the huge effort in courting the economic environment had been succesfull untill then. On the other front the same awareness boosted military efforts and draw new people and energy in the fight, even if it’s evident they could never overcome US’ armies on battlefield. Asymmetrical war is such on the economic and media battlefield too, modern western warfare needs to keep economy running as always, while on the enemy field there’s only the economic need about funding militants. Western propaganda, moving from supposed good reasons, cannot lie without losing moral authority, a problem that the "bad guy" evidently have not, dealing with western public opinion.

Obviously in this frame "the enemy" relies more in rocking media and economy battlefields, important victories can be achieved with small military operations aimed at "soft targets", well covered by media, financial knots and roaring cities fit perfectly the need about shooting at media and economy, but i cannot see it as a war to cities or peculiarly inside them.

But it’s not so easy at war, nor for the bad guys, and even they’ve been able to rock western propaganda, they’re losing consensus between their supporters, even if they already are a flag for many people suffering wars globalization and occupation, they lose their grip on public opinions exactly as their enemies do, maybe because they’re so similar.

Coming to city, undoubtedly is where tensions rise and sometimes explode, but dealing with war and cities I’d draw a line between wars waged by an alien entity and wars & conflicts generated inside the cities, or civil wars. As underlined by Mike Davis in ’Planet of slums’ there are lot of people reasoning on how to wage war ’in’ a city, more than to a city, presuming large revolts from inside.

War is an ancient human activity, often practiced by little men, in my opinion is more than mature and I cannot see any shift towards fundamental evolutions, Falluja has been destroyed as Dresda or other cities and you already cannot win war against a city without destroying it, the other single option drives to a mutual endless entrapment in which the city is jailed, but not won. That’s to say that if i cannot see any evolution, apart from mere technical ones, in waging war to a city.
I’m much more worried about plannings on new ways to control cities and their inhabitants, drafted from a inner perspective by people thinking to the city as the main battlefield of a domestic fight for power and privileges

m

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• To: Nettime
• Subject: Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
• From: t byfield
• Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2008 18:00:58 -0500


sjs2 AT columbia.edu (Thu 12/04/08 at 04:25 AM -0500):

> The project i am developing now asks this about terms like "war" and > "city." > > both are words deeply embedded in particular, albeit globally > present, histories. Further, the current instances we have been > describing here, resist the conventional meanings: so it is easy to > use terms such as terrorism becasue this is a war that does not fit > war as in word war 2 (though of course, there were lots of instances > that fit into today’s "terrorism" bit. > > Question then is whether these current situations are anomalous > (which i think is the easiest way out of a problematic, and I resist > going that way), or become heuristic (in the sense of producing > knowledge about the terms themselves: war and city.

Ah. If there aren’t yet third, fourth, fifth etc ways to think about this than the dichotomy between anomalous and heuristic, there will be — once we build up enough experience, which we surely (and unfortunately) will.

The US context is notable in this regard, because the history of terror in this country is longer and more complex than is widely acknowledged.

Prior to the spectacular Oklahoma City bombing in ’95, rightist attacks were attributed to "extremists" rather than terrorists: Posse Comitatus, the Order, Walter Leroy Moody Jr, and a long list of violence aimed at women’s health practitioners. The racist beliefs of many of these groups makes it hard to completely avoid drawing connections between them and the terrible history of terror aimed at ’minorities,’ but even so it’s rare to see those connections made unless there’s some direct personal or institutional connection with the KKK. And it’s never connected with the amazing history of violence perpetrated by Puerto Rican nationalists: Lolita Lebron and co, who opened fire on the floor of the US House of Representatives in 1954 and wounded five congressmen, Antuilo Ortiz’s 1961 hijacking, and the Puerto Rican FALN which apparently claimed over 120 bombings between in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Alongside this, leftist violent acts are laughably rare. And then, of course, there’s an endless litany of "lone gunman" whose attacks correlate more often than not with shifts in demographics, particularly growing immigrant populations - but they’re usually described as kooks and their actions fenced off from any sociopolitical analysis.

This history is hardly a series of anomalies, though in official/pop discourse the constituent events have certainly been treated as such on a number of levels. With the rise, starting in the late ’70s, of rightist and often Christianist violent groups, we begin to see more heuristic analysis, though mainly emanating from advocacy groups (for example, the ADL and the SPLC). The spectacular attacks, in OK City and the two on the WTC, have cast a very sharp shadow over this kind of activity; as has the war in Iraq. I think (hope?) that it’s become much harder to distinguish between domestic rightist bombs and IEDs in Iraq; but that remains to be seen - particularly as the US begins to demobilize vast numbers of US soldiers who’ll return, I expect, to an ambivalent reception, an economic disster zone, and extremely poor support services.

At the same time, though, it’s not like there’s an endless repertoir of techniques of terror, so it’s fair to ask whether it makes sense to lump its practitioners together on the grounds that they, say, use bombs. Given the last several years of what Matt Fuller, I think, has called the Global War on the Monopoly of Terror, and with it the drive to see everything - very much including peaceful organization and opposition - as TERROR. Heuristics have their benefits, because one alternative, totalizing categories, serve very particular ends. QV "city" and "war."

Cheers,
T

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• To: Nettime
• Subject: Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
• From: "chad scov1lle"
• Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:58:56 +0000


I am thoroughly enjoying this thread. I am not sure if I have any original thoughts pertaining to these concepts of ’war’ and ’city’, but I did want to mention (which might be in the back of everyone’s mind and if it is then I apologize in advance for being redundant) that Paulo Virilio has written extensively on this issue.

/*Chad Scoville

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• To: Nettime
• Subject: Re: Saskia Sassen: Cities and new wars: after Mumbai
• From: Jonathan Lukens
• Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 13:41:25 -0500

Ted:

> These contrasts have many origins: the actual and theorized > relationships between cities and their surroundings, the need for > invading forces to establish strongholds close enough to support > command and logistics needs, the various technical capacities of > forces in conflict (of which there are, as often as not, many), > styles of warfare that are much more complex than the simplistic > dichotomy of a/symmetrical warfare, efforts to manipulate media > (regional, global, sympathetic, etc), and so on. Take, for example, > the Vietnam War. Films of American bombers dropping bombs in pairs > seemingly at random across the Viet countryside have become a > generic symbol of a futile effort to "bomb them back into the stone > age" or "turn the country into a parking lot" — two strikingly > different historical vectors, yes? But this bombing wasn’t random in > some euphemistic sense of the term akin to "random violence," > rather, it was *systematically random*: the purpose of this approach > to bombing, which left deep craters, was to disrupt rural water > tables and thereby drain rice paddies. This, in conjunction with > chemical warfare (Agent Orange is well-known, Agent Blue, Agent > White and others less so) and armored bulldozers formed the doctrine > of "Landscape Management": an effort to deny the Viet Cong any and > every form of cover — physical, social, nutritional — *in order to > urbanize them*.

It’s worth noting that many of the pipe-dreams tied to the goal of "persistent area dominance" in the so-called revolution in military affairs - Darpa’s "Combat Zones that See" or "Heterogeneous Urban RSTA" for example - and the related emphasis on urban warfare or urban "battlespaces" are informed by a concern that the organization of urban spaces limits the effectiveness of precision conventional weapons (that’s smart bombs to you and me)**. The denial of "any and every form of cover" that you mention as a means of forced urbanization underlies some of the emphasis on urbanization in current .mil wanking. Just goes to show you that the folks who drop the bombs aren’t satisfied either way.

**See Stephen Graham’s article Robowar Dreams (afaik locked away in some overpriced proprietary database) for a good overview.

Best
Jon