美退伍空軍中校：戰爭是美國的生意經（觀察者網獨家翻譯）-威廉·阿斯托爾

一系列怪現狀竟成了美國的新常態。預算或許過不了國會這一關，但美軍在利比亞和索馬里的突襲該搞照樣搞；在阿富汗的戰爭機器不能停歇；遠在意大利的海外基地仍要駐守（帝國重歸羅馬）；非洲依然是帝國的獵苑；美國的軍工複合體仍將是全球武器貿易的主導勢力。真可謂：政府門可關，戰爭不能斷。

國會大廈和五角大樓的公務員們開始照常上班了——他們上班就意味着美國在世界各地不斷地醖釀和進行戰爭，並從戰爭中獲取權力和利益。“戰爭是個發橫財的勾當”——1935年，海軍陸戰隊的傳奇少將斯梅德利•巴特勒如是説。話糙理不糙，直到今天也沒人能否定這個曾兩獲國會榮譽獎章的沙場宿將，誰能比他更熟悉美帝國主義呢？

戰爭就是政治嗎？

很久以前，當我還在美國空軍服役的時候，曾學習過德國軍事理論家卡爾•馮•克勞塞維茨對戰爭的定義——“政治以另一種手段的延續”。這個定義實際上高度概括了他在經歷拿破崙戰爭後寫下的經典鉅作《戰爭論》。

把戰爭看作是政治的延續，既有一定的意義，又很可能產生誤導作用：説它有意義是因為，將戰爭與政治進程聯繫起來，説明戰爭應該達成政治目標；説它有誤導作用是因為，這種思維誤將戰爭看作理性的、可控的。我們不能怪克勞塞維茨誤導當代美國，是美國軍方錯誤地解讀、簡單化地理解了克氏。

**幫助美國人理解戰爭真諦的，還有另一位“卡爾”——卡爾•馬克思。**馬克思尤其欣賞克勞塞維茨關於戰爭的看法——“戰鬥之於戰爭，正如現金交易之於商貿”（譯者注：恩格斯語，《馬克思恩格斯書簡》，1858年1月7日）。不管發生戰鬥（或此類現金支付）的頻率如何低，它們都是一整個過程的高潮和最終的決定因素。

換句話説，戰爭的解決途徑只有殺戮，殺戮則是在資本主義剝削名義下的一場血淋淋的交易。馬克思認為這種關於戰爭與商業的對比充滿暗示、意味深遠。我們也該有這樣的覺悟。

與馬克思一樣，美國人不把戰爭僅僅看作一場極端的政治實踐，也將其看作一種帶有剝削性質的非常規商貿活動。戰場就像生意場：這不單是一種簡單的比喻。

在漫長的戰爭史中，這種商貿交易形式多種多樣：既包括開疆拓土，又包括掠奪財富；既可獲取原材料，又擴大了市場份額。美國歷史上的戰爭不乏此類先例。雖然有時候，1812年的第二次獨立戰爭被描述為美英之間的一場小打小鬧，美國遭到最嚴重的挫敗也不過火燒首都華盛頓，但這場戰爭中，美國在前線擊垮了印第安部落，實實在在地獲得了印第安人的土地。

1846年的美墨戰爭又是一場土地的掠奪，這次的受益者是美國的奴隸主。在美西戰爭中，美國殖民主義者對土地的掠奪轉向海外，意圖建立美利堅帝國。美國打着“讓民主制度安全屹立於全世界”的旗號加入了第一次世界大戰，但其真實動機確實捍衞美國在全球的商業利益。

就連第二次世界大戰，一場阻止德日法西斯的正義戰爭，美國也有利益的考量。作為“民主國家的兵工廠”，美國憑藉這場戰爭取代債台高築的英帝國，一舉成為了具有主導地位的世界級大國。

**在朝鮮戰爭與越南戰爭中，美國軍工業利益集團和五角大樓都獲得了極大的利益。**在他們眼中，在伊拉克、中東和非洲進行軍事行動，都是以石油、自然資源和全球主導權等現實利益作為導向的。

 

在戰爭等社會災難中，有人歡笑有人哭。**但戰爭最大的贏家，無外乎在越戰中向美軍供應B52轟炸機的波音，以及提供橙劑的陶氏化學等大公司。**這些“軍火販子”——如今它們被更新潮、更委婉地稱為“國防承包商”——完全不必強行推銷，因為美國永遠處於戰爭和準備戰爭的狀態，它們與美國經濟、外交、國家認同、英雄情結盤根錯節地交織於一體。

美軍在越南投放的橙劑不僅導致大量越南人致殘致畸也使得大量美國越戰士兵深受其害

看看另一種對戰爭的定義：戰爭不是政治與商貿的延續，而是一種社會災難。我們可以借用加拿大作家納奧米•克萊恩的“震盪定律”和“災難資本主義”等概念。當戰爭的災禍降臨時，總有人從中謀求利益。

多虧美國所謂的“愛國主義”和“極端愛國主義”，多數美國人很難以這樣的視角看待戰爭。當愛國主義出現在別的國家時，美國便會給對方扣上“民族主義”、“終極民族主義”等帶有負面色彩的高帽子。當美軍在前線作戰時，美國政府向國內社會灌輸“擁軍”思想，要求民眾揮舞國旗；將國家利益放在首要位置；崇敬無私奉獻、救贖犧牲的愛國理想（除了1%，美國上下所有人都肩負着奉獻與犧牲的使命）。

當我們的軍隊在前線艱苦犧牲的時候，另一羣人在後方數錢到手軟。普通美國人很難正視這一令人不安的事實。這樣的想法不僅反動，簡直是賣國！不要理會究竟誰從戰爭中獲益，誰憑藉戰爭成為商界精英，因為最終為遏制敵人而付出的代價（為了利益做出一些犧牲）畢竟是值得的。我們的敵人從前是紅色威脅，進入21世紀後，殺人不眨眼的恐怖分子成了全美公敵。

對於與洛克希德•馬丁（譯者注：美國最大的國防承包商）類似的公司來説，無休無止的戰爭意味着無窮無盡的利益。它們將軍火賣給五角大樓以及世界其它國家，不僅獲得實實在在的利潤，還造就了一個隨時隨地需要軍火支持的世界。在追求安全或勝利的過程中，國家領袖們心甘情願地付出了高昂的代價。

不管把商業與戰爭的結合稱作克勞塞維茨-馬克思反饋循環還是卡爾辯證法，它即使未能完全涵蓋戰爭的意義，也至少提醒了我們，利益和權力是推動戰爭這種災難資本主義的幕後黑手。

卡爾文•庫利奇總統曾於上世紀二十年代宣稱“美國的事業是商業”。將近一個世紀後的今天，美國的事業是戰爭。不過當今的總統先生過於謙虛，不願承認美國的事業蒸蒸日上。

戰爭英雄淪為商品

當今，許多年輕人希望擺脱消費主義的桎梏。為了尋找新的身份認同，投軍從戎者甚眾。在軍旅生涯中，他們確實找到了新的身份，成為了軍營乃至全社會的勇士、戰士和英雄。

然而，在他們穿上軍服的時刻起，便陷入了一個悖論：因為我們的軍隊仍不過是一件商品，逃不脱被國家消費的命運。戰爭和暴力確確實實地消耗掉了他們的生命。那麼他們獲得的補償是什麼？被包裝成時代的英雄，向商品一樣被銷往全國。

美軍在越南噴灑橙劑

作為一名退伍老兵，文化人類學家斯蒂文•加德納曾撰寫過一篇雄文，解析軍事化背景下的“英雄受虐情結”以及美國青年受到的誘惑。大意是，為了遠離毫無意義的消費主義，逃避冗繁的工作，許多志願者最終被訓練成暴力的信徒，既渴望給他人造成痛苦，也渴望自身感受到痛苦。只要暴力的犧牲品是敵人和外國平民，美國人便能夠對於這樣嚴酷的事實視而不見。

這種與戰爭中暴力密不可分的“英雄”身份，時常顯得與和平年代的大環境格格不入。退伍老兵們的沮喪和挫敗感，往往是家庭暴力和自殺事件的深層因素。由於在美國社會中，適應於和平年代的工作機會越來越少，財富和機遇都越來越嚴重地兩極分化，許多退伍老兵或選擇用藥物麻醉自己，或成為令人毛骨悚然的暴徒。產生這些社會問題的根本原因在於戰爭英雄的商品化，他們以國家的名義“英勇”地濫施暴力。然而多數美國人選擇性地遺忘了這些事實。

你也許對戰爭不感興趣，但戰爭對你卻興趣甚濃

俄國革命家列夫•托洛斯基曾簡練地總結道，“你也許對戰爭不感興趣，但戰爭對你卻興趣甚濃。”如果戰爭是戰鬥和與商貿、災難與商品的結合體，那麼戰爭的決定權便不應僅掌握在政治領袖手中——起碼不應在將軍們手中。只要發生戰爭，無論我們表面上離戰場有多遠，都免不了成為戰爭的顧客和消費者。多數美國人都在為戰爭買單，有人甚至付出了高昂的代價，但真正獲益的自由少數人。只要擦亮眼睛看清楚究竟是誰在大發戰爭財，就能切實理解什麼叫做戰爭。

無怪乎我們的領袖們總讓我們不要過多為戰爭這樣的國家大事瞎操心——只要繼續支持我們的大兵，繼續買東西吃東西，繼續讓星條旗飄揚便可高枕無憂。如果正如名言所説，愛國主義是流氓最後的庇護所，那麼它也是戰爭販子們招徠顧客的首要資源。

記住一點：在戰爭這樁大買賣中，產品和利潤都屬於他們，而不屬於美國，不屬於全世界。（觀察者網楊晗軼/譯）

本文為tomdispatch.com網站專欄作者，美國退役空軍中校William J. Astore 文章《The Business of America Is War》（《戰爭：美國的生意經》），進入下頁查看原文。

 

The Business of America Is War

——Disaster Capitalism on the Battlefield and in the Boardroom

By William J. Astore There is a new normal in America: our government may shut down, but our wars continue. Congress may not be able to pass a budget, but the U.S. military can still launch commando raids in Libya and Somalia, the Afghan War can still beprosecuted, Italy can be garrisoned by American troops (putting the “empire” back in Rome), Africa can be used as an imperial playground (as in the late nineteenth century “scramble for Africa,” but with the U.S. and China doing the scrambling this time around), and the military-industrial complex can still dominate the world’s arms trade.

In the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, it’s business as usual, if your definition of “business” is the power and profits you get from constantly preparing for and prosecuting wars around the world. “War is a racket,” General Smedley Butlerfamously declared in 1935, and even now it’s hard to disagree with a man who had two Congressional Medals of Honor to his credit and was intimately familiar with American imperialism.

War Is Politics, Right?

Once upon a time, as a serving officer in the U.S. Air Force, I was taught that Carl von Clausewitz had defined war as a continuation of politics by other means. This definition is, in fact, a simplification of his classic and complex book, On War, written after his experiences fighting Napoleon in the early nineteenth century.

The idea of war as a continuation of politics is both moderately interesting and dangerously misleading: interesting because it connects war to political processes and suggests that they should be fought for political goals; misleading because it suggests that war is essentially rational and so controllable. The fault here is not Clausewitz’s, but the American military’s for misreading and oversimplifying him.

Perhaps another “Carl” might lend a hand when it comes to helping Americans understand what war is really all about. I’m referring to Karl Marx, who admired Clausewitz, notably for his idea that combat is to war what a cash payment is to commerce. However seldom combat (or such payments) may happen, they are the culmination and so the ultimate arbiters of the process.

War, in other words, is settled by killing, a bloody transaction that echoes the exploitative exchanges of capitalism. Marx found this idea to be both suggestive and pregnant with meaning. So should we all.

Following Marx, Americans ought to think about war not just as an extreme exercise of politics, but also as a continuation of exploitative commerce by other means. Combat as commerce: there’s more in that than simple alliteration.

In the history of war, such commercial transactions took many forms, whether as territory conquered, spoils carted away, raw materials appropriated, or market share gained. Consider American wars. The War of 1812 is sometimes portrayed as a minor dust-up with Britain, involving the temporary occupation and burning of our capital, but it really was about crushing Indians on the frontier and grabbing their land. The Mexican-American War was another land grab, this time for the benefit of slaveholders. The Spanish-American War was a land grab for those seeking an American empire overseas, while World War I was for making the world “safe for democracy” -- and for American business interests globally.

Even World War II, a war necessary to stop Hitler and Imperial Japan, witnessed the emergence of the U.S. as the arsenal of democracy, the world’s dominant power, and the new imperial stand-in for a bankrupt British Empire.

Korea? Vietnam? Lots of profit for the military-industrial complex and plenty of power for the Pentagon establishment. Iraq, the Middle East, current adventures in Africa? Oil, markets, natural resources, global dominance.

In societal calamities like war, there will always be winners and losers. But the clearest winners are often companies like Boeing and Dow Chemical, which provided B-52 bombers and Agent Orange, respectively, to the U.S. military in Vietnam. Such “arms merchants” -- an older, more honest term than today’s “defense contractor” -- don’t have to pursue the hard sell, not when war and preparations for it have become so permanently, inseparably intertwined with the American economy, foreign policy, and our nation’s identity as a rugged land of “warriors” and “heroes” (more on that in a moment).

War as Disaster Capitalism

Consider one more definition of war: not as politics or even as commerce, but as societal catastrophe. Thinking this way, we can apply Naomi Klein’s concepts of the “shock doctrine” and “disaster capitalism” to it. When such disasters occur, there are always those who seek to turn a profit.

Most Americans are, however, discouraged from thinking about war this way thanks to the power of what we call “patriotism” or, at an extreme, “superpatriotism” when it applies to us, and the significantly more negative “nationalism” or “ultra-nationalism” when it appears in other countries. During wars, we’re told to “support our troops,” to wave the flag, to put country first, to respect the patriotic ideal of selfless service and redemptive sacrifice (even if all but 1% of us are never expected to serve or sacrifice).

We’re discouraged from reflecting on the uncomfortable fact that, as “our” troops sacrifice and suffer, others in society are profiting big time. Such thoughts are considered unseemly and unpatriotic. Pay no attention to the war profiteers, who pass as perfectly respectable companies. After all, any price is worth paying (or profits worth offering up) to contain the enemy -- not so long ago, the red menace, but in the twenty-first century, the murderous terrorist.

Forever war is forever profitable. Think of the Lockheed Martins of the world. In their commerce with the Pentagon, as well as the militaries of other nations, they ultimately seek cash payment for their weapons and a world in which such weaponry will be eternally needed. In the pursuit of security or victory, political leaders willingly pay their price.

Call it a Clausewitzian/Marxian feedback loop or the dialectic of Carl and Karl. It also represents the eternal marriage of combat and commerce. If it doesn’t catch all of what war is about, it should at least remind us of the degree to which war as disaster capitalism is driven by profit and power.

For a synthesis, we need only turn from Carl or Karl to Cal -- President Calvin Coolidge, that is. “The business of America is business,” he declared in the Roaring Twenties. Almost a century later, the business of America is war, even if today’s presidents are too polite to mention that the business is booming.

America’s War Heroes as Commodities

Many young people today are, in fact, looking for a release from consumerism. In seeking new identities, quite a few turn to the military. And it provides. Recruits are hailed as warriors and warfighters, as heroes, and not just within the military either, but by society at large.

Yet in joining the military and being celebrated for that act, our troops paradoxically become yet another commodity, another consumable of the state. Indeed, they become consumed by war and its violence. Their compensation? To be packaged and marketed as the heroes of our militarized moment. Steven Gardiner, a cultural anthropologist and U.S. Army veteran, has written eloquently about what he calls the “heroic masochism” of militarized settings and their allure for America’s youth. Put succinctly, in seeking to escape a consumerism that has lost its meaning and find a release from dead-end jobs, many volunteers are transformed into celebrants of violence, seekers and givers of pain, a harsh reality Americans ignore as long as that violence is acted out overseas against our enemies and local populations.

Such “heroic” identities, tied so closely to violence in war, often prove poorly suited to peacetime settings. Frustration and demoralization devolve into domestic violence and suicide. In an American society with ever fewer meaningful peacetime jobs, exhibiting greater and greater polarization of wealth and opportunity, the decisions of some veterans to turn to or return to mind-numbing drugs of various sorts and soul-stirring violence is tragically predictable. That it stems from their exploitative commodification as so many heroic inflictors of violence in our name is a reality most Americans are content to forget.

You May Not Be Interested in War, but War Is Interested in You

As Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky pithily observed, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” If war is combat and commerce, calamity and commodity, it cannot be left to our political leaders alone -- and certainly not to our generals. When it comes to war, however far from it we may seem to be, we’re all in our own ways customers and consumers. Some pay a high price. Many pay a little. A few gain a lot. Keep an eye on those few and you’ll end up with a keener appreciation of what war is actually all about.

No wonder our leaders tell us not to worry our little heads about our wars -- just support those troops, go shopping, and keep waving that flag. If patriotism is famously the last refuge of the scoundrel, it’s also the first recourse of those seeking to mobilize customers for the latest bloodletting exercise in combat as commerce.

Just remember: in the grand bargain that is war, it’s their product and their profit. And that’s no bargain for America, or for that matter for the world.

William Astore, a TomDispatch regular, is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He edits the blog contraryperspective.com and may be reached at [email protected].