Have you read Deleuze? from your comment here I think you would enjoy his thoughts on empires and what he called “war machines” and “the state apparatus.”
Here’s a good comment on it:
The TL:DR is: for D&G 'war machines' are the specific constitution, form and alignment of a state that refuses to be a state (a nomad state). It is the tools by which a state refuses to be a state.
The state as we think of it relies upon centralization, stability and continuity--war machines are by definition nomadic, shifting locations, and leaders, decentralizing, redefining what is and isn't a periphery etc.
At the same time, both are effective at commandeering power and directing it towards a goal: even if the state claims a monopoly on being able to do this.
It is the difference between a Medieval city state and the Mongol horde, or a pirate ship, or if you prefer a contemporary example, between a modern state, and terrorist groups, marginal groups, autonomous zone festivals like "Burning man", anarchist collectives, homeless camps, etc which operate within it and on the periphery of it, while neglecting or actively disrupting the state's hegemony.
War machines can and often are coopted by state power, but they are still separate from it and disruptive to it.
No! Got a book or essay recommendation in particular? I'd definitely be interested.
I've been thinking a lot about how the idea of "American Empire" gets dismissed as "hippie crap," but it's an extremely helpful lens for understanding what global superpowers do in the modern era, as long as you have a more flexible definition of empire than "Exactly like Rome."
Just a warning: Deleuze and Guattari are notoriously hard to understand and/or wordy and unclear with their writing. Some people think that makes it not worthwhile, but I think it’s absolutely full of interesting ideas.
> understanding what global superpowers do in the modern era, as long as you have a more flexible definition
Yeah, absolutely. I remember a certain sense of enlightenment as undergraduate when a professor laid out the way the US projects military power - not through direct land occupation and control, but through deployment of a network of semi-permanent bases from which force can be rapidly unleashed on flexible terms, as well as through "advisors" that can co-opt local armies to carry out US objectives.
Coupling that with direct and indirect shaping of cultural and economic consensus across allied nations, it's hard to define the role of northamerican states with a word different from "empire".
Here’s a good comment on it:
The TL:DR is: for D&G 'war machines' are the specific constitution, form and alignment of a state that refuses to be a state (a nomad state). It is the tools by which a state refuses to be a state.
The state as we think of it relies upon centralization, stability and continuity--war machines are by definition nomadic, shifting locations, and leaders, decentralizing, redefining what is and isn't a periphery etc.
At the same time, both are effective at commandeering power and directing it towards a goal: even if the state claims a monopoly on being able to do this.
It is the difference between a Medieval city state and the Mongol horde, or a pirate ship, or if you prefer a contemporary example, between a modern state, and terrorist groups, marginal groups, autonomous zone festivals like "Burning man", anarchist collectives, homeless camps, etc which operate within it and on the periphery of it, while neglecting or actively disrupting the state's hegemony.
War machines can and often are coopted by state power, but they are still separate from it and disruptive to it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalTheory/comments/832eri/comm...