Description
Simulation, hyperbole, hypocrisy: Soldiers’ negotiations of remote warfare in Iraq
After the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 00s, Western warfare has increasingly shifted from a ‘boots on the ground’ to a ‘remote warfare approach’. This approach for instance involves local train, advice and assist missions carried out within the safety of military bases, or air- and drone strikes carried out from afar. While such practices of remote warfare are deemed less costly and more politically palatable by Western policy-makers, this article suggests that remote warfare creates a range of tensions between soldiers´ professional training and imaginings of war and their experiences when deployed. The article therefore asks how soldiers’ negotiate these tensions; drawing in part on the authors’ own field observations and interviews from Operation Inherent Resolve and the NATO Mission in Iraq. Theoretically, the article uses key insights from poststructuralism and practice theory, and proposes three analytical concepts to study these negotiations, 1) simulating war e.g. war gaming, music, and intense physical exercise, 2) hyperbole, e.g. exaggeration or intensification of dangerous and violent experiences, and 3) hypocrisy of language and ambiguities of domination e.g. the simultaneous articulations of Iraqis as equal partners, subordinates and threats. We find that such forms of negotiations lead to a (re)production of sites of war (such as Iraq) as barren, distant, and in perpetual conflict, prompting indifference and little deliberation about the burdens of war in Western publics, as well as with the deployed soldiers themselves.
