US military destabilization aimed to transform regional culture into neoliberal values

Evidence

In the nineteenth century, various European nations set up centers for the study of the Orient from which there emerged a huge body of Orientalist scholarship integrally tied to imperialism and colonization. In this chapter, and throughout the book generally, I focus mainly on the Middle East and North Africa, because it was these regions, due to their proximity to Europe, that largely informed the development of an elite Western vocabulary about “Islam.” After World War II, the United States took over from France and England, both literally and metaphorically. It began to exercise its hegemony in the region through the borrowed language of Orientalism, but also through the vocabulary of capitalist modernization, which was better suited to the new form of imperialism initiated by the United States. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 28 (#expands, via linked claim)

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a unipolar world, or what has been called a “unipolar moment,” led to a reconfiguration of US imperialism. At the time, the discussion revolved around a “peace dividend” and a global order characterized by butter, not guns. The United States would create and police a “New World Order” in which it would show up anywhere it was needed, like a “globocop,” to right wrongs, advance humanitarian goals, and save the day. The 1991 Gulf War demonstrated to the world that the end of “Communism” did not mean the end of the US military; instead of fighting the Russians, it would be used against other still-significant threats to international stability—rogue states, failed states, terrorists, and a host of others who refused to acquiesce to pax Americana. This was not going to be accomplished through the naked assertion of power, but through the logic of multiculturalism and benevolence. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 403 (#complicates, via linked claim)

The core insight of the Neoliberal Thought Collective was that the cultural and the economic should not be treated as substitutes, much less discrete spheres of experience, but rather, as integrated into a virtuous whole: surrender your selfish arrogance and humbly prostrate yourself before the Wisdom of the Universe, as nurtured and conveyed by the market. “Be all you can be” had jettisoned the injunction to “know yourself” and replaced it with “Start your own business!” even if it only meant homeschooling your children. As religion took on more of the trappings of just-in-time provision of entertainment services, and “values” assumed the mix-and-match character of Do It Yourself bricolage, the materiality of rock-solid “interests” melted into thin air. After all, neoliberals deny that you are the unimpeachable judge of your own welfare, however much they worship at the altar of Freedom. The more the line between “The Sphere Previously Known as the Economic” and culture or religion was progressively obscured and erased, the more irreversible the neoliberal long march. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 298 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Neocons valued regional destabilization for its own sake, not democratic ends — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 439; The US military weaponized social science and empathy in counterinsurgency doctrine; Little America bases insulate troops and transform host-nation culture and economies (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Post-Cold War US empire rebranded military force as benevolent multicultural intervention #complicates (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 403
• US post-war hegemony repurposed Orientalism and modernization theory to justify empire. #expands (0.80) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 28
• The US military weaponized social science and empathy in counterinsurgency doctrine #expands (0.78)
• Neoliberalism’s durability rests on fusing the economic with the cultural #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 298
• Little America bases insulate troops and transform host-nation culture and economies #exemplifies (0.75)
• The Pentagon weaponized academic anthropology as a counterinsurgency tool #expands (0.75)
• Hegemonic projects can refashion backward national-popular culture into reactionary formations #complicates (0.72) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 141