The New Spatiality of Security: Operational Uncertainty and the US Military in Iraq

by Croser; Caroline M.

• ISBN13: 9780415565226
• ISBN10: 0415565227
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-10-22
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book provides a rigorous critical analysis of how the US military operates in Iraq, exploring the spatial practices of violence.Contemporary critical analyses of the United States' involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan emphasise the hegemonic nature of the US military experience, while conventional military analyses focus on fixed categories such as 'counter-insurgency' or 'network-centric warfare'. Drawing on fieldwork examining the use of a new command and control technology by 1 st Cavalry Division (US Army) in 2004-2005, this book elaborates a more nuanced understanding of US military violence by exploring the changing (and sometimes incoherent) spatial practices through which violence was exercised.The author combines fieldwork with a spatial vocabulary of violence from the work of Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and methodological inspiration from the micro-observations of material semiotics in Science and Technology Studies to conclude that the US Army's experience in Iraq has been neither as circumscribed nor as easily defined as critical theorists and conventional military analysts alike would suggest.This innovative book will be of much interest to students of critical security studies, strategic studies, military studies, social and spatial theory and IR in general.Caroline M. Croser is a Lecturer in Politics at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, where she teaches defence studies.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Security in the noughties: from net-centric to hybrid wars	p. 3
Reformulating security as a 'problematic': the role of critical security studies	p. 6
A map of the work	p. 8
The spatial operation of violence	p. 12
Spatial orderings: bounding the conditions of possibilities of violence	p. 15
Rhythm analysis: the emergence of novelty in the everyday	p. 20
Difference as political: the war machine and the outside of power	p. 25
Conclusions	p. 35
Interlude: the (not-so-)distant roar of battle	p. 36
Network-centric warfare, three-block warfare, and the new spatiality of the battlespace	p. 36
Urban battlespaces: the spatial logic(s) of US military doctrine meet the experimental space(s) of the city of Baghdad	p. 43
A praxiography of the battlespace	p. 50
What kind of real?	p. 50
A methodology for an uncertain real	p. 59
Interrogating the alternate real	p. 65
Conclusions	p. 67
CPOF and the battlespace multiple	p. 69
Locating spatial practices of violence in Baghdad	p. 69
Using CPOF (1): the hardware and software architecture	p. 72
Introducing multiplicity (in theory, in the TOC)	p. 77
Using CPOF (2): the human dimension	p. 79
Ontological singularity and multiplicity in CPOF	p. 82
Addressing multiplicity in the event-ful city	p. 89
The role of command in addressing multiplicity	p. 89
Correlating multiplicity in CPOF through layering	p. 96
Mobilizing multiplicity in CPOF through temporality	p. 98
Conclusions: the experimental quality of event-fulness	p. 106
From multiplicity to presence in Baghdad	p. 109
Actualizing a unit in the military: the enaction of presence	p. 113
Naming a 'unit-in-CPOF'	p. 118
Conclusions	p. 121
The mobile possibility of the 'unit-in-CPOF'	p. 123
From (chrono)linear to 'track and trace' presence	p. 123
The absence of the unit: exclusions, hauntings, and the limits of mobility	p. 126
Conclusions	p. 134
Conclusion	p. 137
The political impetus of exploring space and violence	p. 139
Finding a way forward for critically engaging violence	p. 141
Notes	p. 142
References	p. 154
Index	p. 163
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