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THE BATTLE FOR MODeRN 1923


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on power and charlottesville

(buck­le in, it’s long)

When I was in grad­u­ate school for in­ter­na­tion­al con­flict res­o­lu­tion, we stud­ied the ef­fi­ca­cy of Nye’s con­cept of ‘soft pow­er’ pret­ty in depth be­cause it was the ‘it’ the­o­ry of the age. Soft pow­er is a broad term de­scrib­ing the ‘noncoercive’/nonviolent tools like eco­nom­ic as­sis­tance, cul­tur­al ex­changes, and ed­u­ca­tion pro­grams that can have dra­mat­ic im­pact on re­duc­ing in­sta­bil­i­ty be­tween actors. 

These tools are es­sen­tial­ly the op­po­site of ‘hard pow­er’ —mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic co­er­cion. Soft pow­er can be an ex­treme­ly ef­fec­tive set of tools dur­ing con­flict emer­gence, frozen con­flicts, dis­pute set­tle­ment, and post-con­flict re­con­struc­tion, but it is se­vere­ly lim­it­ed dur­ing the con­flict es­ca­la­tion, ‘stalemate’/during con­flict, and is most cas­es, even dur­ing de-es­ca­la­tion pe­ri­ods for a myr­i­ad of reasons.

In cas­es where the pol­i­cy or cul­tur­al val­ues of one ac­tor is in di­rect odds with the mo­ti­va­tions, ex­e­cu­tion, and in­tend­ed out­comes of an­oth­er, soft pow­er is re­pelled and ul­ti­mate­ly re­quires the sup­port of hard power. 

Soft pow­er also only pro­duces in­cre­men­tal out­comes over long pe­ri­ods of time, so it is not use­ful when faced with an im­me­di­ate ex­is­ten­tial threat with­out work­ing in tan­dem with hard pow­er. With­out par­tic­i­pa­tion from both ac­tors, soft pow­er is os­ten­si­bly neutered. Fi­nal­ly, there is also the ra­tio­nal­ist cri­tique that ac­tors ul­ti­mate­ly only tru­ly re­spond to mon­ey and the use of force and that soft pow­er is al­ways backed with the im­pli­ca­tion of hard power.

How does this con­cept of pow­er ap­ply to Char­lottesville?

You have two ac­tors with di­ver­gent cul­tur­al val­ues: White Supremacists/White Na­tion­al­ist­s/­NeoN­azis/Alt-Right whose be­liefs range from the pro­tec­tion of White priv­i­lege to es­tab­lish­ing a White eth­nos­tate in the US to the full eradication/genocide of non-Whites. 

Then, you have the counter-pro­tes­tors/An­tifa, whose var­ied be­liefs ul­ti­mate­ly boil down to fos­ter­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al state with equal rights for all iden­ti­ty groups. There is also the added com­plex­i­ty of do­mes­tic pol­i­cy and key po­lit­i­cal elites that sup­port in­sti­tu­tion­al racism in odds with the counter-pro­tes­tors/An­tifa.

Char­lottesville was a pe­ri­od of con­flict es­ca­la­tion on part of the WS/WN/NN/AR that re­sult­ed stale­mate be­tween both ac­tors. At no point dur­ing this event was the soft pow­er avail­able to the counter-pro­test­er­s/An­tifa, though there were sev­er­al failed efforts.

In fact, the pe­ri­od of soft pow­er mech­a­nisms for avoid­ing this par­tic­u­lar con­flict has long since lapsed based on known ef­fec­tive con­flict pre­ven­tion mod­els: (Ex­am­ples: In the case of eth­nic strat­i­fi­ca­tion it re­quired poli­cies of pow­er-shar­ing – the re­peal of the Voter’s Rights Act, un­der­min­ing civ­il rights, and frankly the en­tire­ty of Amer­i­can his­to­ry fucked that, in po­lar­ized at­ti­tudes it re­quired cross-cul­tur­al shar­ing – cul­tur­al ap­pro­pri­a­tion, so­cial strat­i­fi­ca­tion, cor­po­rate me­dia, etc., fucked that, and in civic in­sta­bil­i­ty it re­quired sound in­sti­tu­tions – po­lice bru­tal­i­ty, the deep racism of our ju­di­cial branch, non-rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al gov­er­nance, etc., fucked that).

The mo­ti­va­tions, ex­e­cu­tion, and in­tend­ed out­comes of both groups are di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed, mean­ing any ef­fort of soft pow­er (in­clud­ing non­vi­o­lent ac­tivism through diplo­ma­cy, in­cen­tives, or ed­u­ca­tion) would be re­pelled in­stant­ly. The two ac­tors were down to the ex­er­cise of hard pow­er to achieve their ends whether through di­rect ap­pli­ca­tion or sim­ply the im­pli­ca­tion of threat. We ob­vi­ous­ly saw both in this situation.

To fur­ther com­pli­cate the pow­er dy­nam­ics in Char­lottesville, we need to fac­tor in the ac­tu­al ends when it comes to the use of more palat­able soft pow­er and the less palat­able hard power. 

Both soft and hard pow­er can be used for il­le­git­i­mate gains (Nazis also can use ed­u­ca­tion, diplo­ma­cy, and eco­nom­ic as­sis­tance to fur­ther their in­tend­ed outcomes).

Thus, in a mea­sured as­sess­ment of ends and means, the type of pow­er is ul­ti­mate­ly not as im­por­tant as the out­come, though ob­vi­ous­ly the use of soft pow­er is more de­sir­able be­cause it has less of a neg­a­tive im­pact on the ends.

So tak­ing the mo­ti­va­tions of the ac­tors, the dy­nam­ics of pow­er, and known con­flict res­o­lu­tion mod­els into ac­count, there was only two pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios to reach de-es­ca­la­tion of the stale­mate in Charlottesville:

a.)  Ex­er­cise of hard pow­er by one or both actors
b.)  Ob­jec­tive third par­ty peace­keep­ing intervention
b.)  is off the ta­ble as the only avail­able third par­ty was the po­lice, which have long since been ob­jec­tive in racial mat­ters. There­fore, a.)  was the only pos­si­ble outcome.

So con­sid­er­ing a.),  who would you rather wield hard pow­er: White Su­prema­cists or Antifa? 

The an­swer is ob­vi­ous from a moral stand­point: Punch the fuck­ing White Su­prema­cist, punch them into a sub­mis­sive point where de-es­ca­la­tion from the stale­mate is pos­si­ble – then and *only* then can we talk about ef­face­able ap­pli­ca­tions of soft pow­er to deal with ***overt*** (☜ key­word!) White Su­prema­cists in our country.
 

—na­tal­ie michelle

Flom­mist Na­tal­ie Michelle does­n’t have a bio. She just rants. Copy­right © 2017 Na­tal­ie Michelle.

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Der Tung
Posted
Wed 16 Aug 2017

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