There’s some difference between the violence of “pay our debts or we’ll kill you” and “we’ve destabilized your home region; you need to buy our weapons or they’ll kill you” and “the only way you can afford to feed yourselves is if you buy our subsidized food crops.”
It’s all violent, but it’s not always violence inflicted by jets and aircraft carriers like in the picture.
The reason we can get away with non-military violence is because we have ultimate recourse to military violence. Think, how did we destabilize that home region before selling them weapons? How did we deprive an entire region of food to the point that they have to buy it from us? This all ties back to our reliance on overwhelming force.
And the reason we can get away with military violence is because of financialized violence. They’re interconnected.
For instance, we destabilize regions by bombing them, but we also destabilize them by giving financial support (and often also military support) to opposition parties and terrorist groups who then carry out the violence for us. We also destabilize regions by trapping them in debt, and that debt is partially enforced by military violence, but partially enforced by SWIFT banking and NGO aid organizations and IMF loans and the almighty petrodollar that backs it all up.
It’s a snake eating its own ass. Where the financial warfare ends and the literal warfare begins is impossible to distinguish.
IMO you’re right about most of that but you do realize that most of them distill down to “violence with extra steps”.
There’s some difference between the violence of “pay our debts or we’ll kill you” and “we’ve destabilized your home region; you need to buy our weapons or they’ll kill you” and “the only way you can afford to feed yourselves is if you buy our subsidized food crops.”
It’s all violent, but it’s not always violence inflicted by jets and aircraft carriers like in the picture.
The reason we can get away with non-military violence is because we have ultimate recourse to military violence. Think, how did we destabilize that home region before selling them weapons? How did we deprive an entire region of food to the point that they have to buy it from us? This all ties back to our reliance on overwhelming force.
And the reason we can get away with military violence is because of financialized violence. They’re interconnected.
For instance, we destabilize regions by bombing them, but we also destabilize them by giving financial support (and often also military support) to opposition parties and terrorist groups who then carry out the violence for us. We also destabilize regions by trapping them in debt, and that debt is partially enforced by military violence, but partially enforced by SWIFT banking and NGO aid organizations and IMF loans and the almighty petrodollar that backs it all up.
It’s a snake eating its own ass. Where the financial warfare ends and the literal warfare begins is impossible to distinguish.
I can hear that in Yugopnik’s voice lol