This past Thursday evening the York Centre for International & Security Studies hosted a talk entitled "The Culture, Technology and Ethics of Virtuous War" as part of an ongoing lecture series on dillemmas in Canadian Security. The featured speaker at this event was James Der Derian (of the Watson Institute for International Studies), an Oxford educated scholar who examines military strategy in light of flows of information, visual culture and ethics. I was only obliquely familiar with Der Derian before the talk but it was extremely accessible for me as he very much framed his thinking regarding American warfare in relationship to the work Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virillio – simulation and speed were both frequent points of reference.

[Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial Media Entertainment Network (2nd Edition), video trailer]

Der Derian's talk presented a nuanced reading of the idea of the "virtuous" war by focusing on a range of contemporary techniques for managing the battlefield that included predator drones, embedded anthropologists and recent shifts in the tone of military training. He also presented a few exciting film projects that were packed with interviews with leading military thinkers and strategists. The following notes provide a general overview of his informal lecture:

• Der Derian opens talk by pointing out that the phrase virtuous war is a "felicitous oxymoron".
• His scholarship is particularly indebted to Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin. The focus of the latter on of the mass production of objects and images is more relevant than ever.
• While Baudrillard famously stated that "The Gulf War did not take place" to suggest that the 1990-91 conflict was emblematic of a new type of warfare. In pinpointing the origins of this new "simulated" battlefield Der Derian cites a slightly earlier moment: February 1989 – as Gorbachev announced governmental reform in the Soviet Union, American soldiers were busy battling the Krasnovians (a fake Russian regiment) in war games at Fort Irwin, George Bush was present at this event and the following transpired: "Kitted out in a photo-opportunistic ensemble of camouflage jacket, pin-strip trousers, and wing-tip shows, Bush used a radio link to tell the 2,689 players spread-out over the Mojave Desert that "we are pleased to see Chairman Gorbachev's proposal to expand steps towards pluralism in the Soviet Union." Inspired, the "Soviet" 197th Krasnovian Motorized Rifle Regiment made borscht out of the U.S. Third Brigade..." (quote culled from Der Derian's "The Simulation Syndrome: From War Games to Game Wars").
• The Military-industrial complex is an antiquated concept and the commercial sector/defense assemblage is better described as the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network (MIME-net). [See also Ed Halter's From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Videogames]
• Drone attacks have quadrupled under Obama.
• Shock and awe as media performance. Note the brilliant montage of Wesley Clark, Arthur Cebrowski and Virillio from 6:00-8:30 in the video embedded above. Cebrowski dismissing the idea of equality on the battlefield: "That is not the American way of war. We love Super Bowls – we want to see the opposition swept off the field."
• The last third of the talk addressed the controversial Human Terrain System project which embeds anthropologists and social scientists with combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are numerous ethical questions posed by this endeavour as it (arguably) "weaponizes" the social sciences and attempts to instrumentalize American cultural engagement in foreign countries. Der Derian (and collaborators David and Michael Udris) have recently completed Human Terrain, a documentary examining this troubled initiative.

The above smattering of bullet points does not do Der Derian's presentation justice – I wasn't in top note taking form at this event and I admit to cherry picking the topics that most interested me. Rest assured that the recently updated Virtuous War has been added to my "to read" list.