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The Formation of the ‘Western’ Strategic Gaze: A Case Study on Emotional Irrelevance in International Politics

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Researching Emotions in International Relations

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in International Relations ((PSIR))

Abstract

Why and how did a cartographic narrative emerge, which makes empathic emotions irrelevant, encourages resorting to violence, symbolically transforms ‘own troops’ into reified entities that can be sacrificed, and, in general, facilitates war-waging? The analysis of material factors (be they military manpower, defense budgets, and/or weapons available in armed forces’ arsenals) and/or of balances of power is not sufficient to decipher this puzzle. In order to understand war, it is necessary to take into account the existence of social representations, especially those contributing to hush up ‘positive’ (empathic) emotions toward the Other. Using a sociological historical approach inspired by Science and Technology Studies, this chapter aims at exploring the social forces that allowed such dehumanizing representations, thereby making emotions largely irrelevant, to succeed and circulate transnationally in Europe for centuries.

The starkest reality of war is that the enemy is never really a monster, never inhuman. Warriors have often tried to reduce their foes to sub-humans to prop up their denial, but the fact is the enemy is someone who dreams, someone who loves, someone who just needed a job, someone who is just wanting for a break to take a leak or eat his supper: a full-fledged human just like us.

Stan Goff (US Army, retired) ( 2004 , p. 38)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The ‘gaze’ concept is hereafter borrowed from Priya Satia’s book on British imperial warfare (2008). The historian evoked the construction of a coercive ‘state gaze’ by colonial agents and soldiers. Antoine Bousquet later coined the concept of ‘martial gaze’ (Bousquet, 2018).

  2. 2.

    Scholars from these fields analyzed ‘images’ and ‘(mis)perceptions’ in international relations (Jervis, 1976; White, 1966). However, their research did not directly untangle the way knowledge production, emotions, and dehumanization are interwoven in conflict .

  3. 3.

    Historical research has nonetheless shown that links were forged between racist and technical dehumanizing narratives during both colonial wars and the Second World War (Hull, 2004; Russell, 1996; Satia, 2008; Sherry, 1989).

  4. 4.

    The whole range of STS’s operational concepts could not be adopted and used in this short chapter. For more about them, see: Latour 1988.

  5. 5.

    Lack of space made it impossible to provide all references to these books and treatises in this chapter. More bibliographical information can be found in: Wasinski (2011).

  6. 6.

    In some instances, ‘reaction’ consists in actions aimed at transforming the narrative. In the field of military history, a good example is given by the Vietnam War . This conflict was first assessed by the Americans not as a local nationalist conflict but as a component of the war against communism, a narrative that has some emotional appeal in the United States . After the 1975 Communist victory, a new (and emotionally laden) narrative, based on the myth of the domestic ‘stab in back’ by Liberals, imposed itself about the conflict (Lembcke, 2000). This new narrative contributed to Ronald Reagan’s accession to the presidency and helped justify, among others, its interventionist policy in Latin America in order to ‘kick out the Vietnam syndrome’. To put it more schematically, a possible feedback loop can be drawn between ‘reaction’ and ‘narrative’.

  7. 7.

    It should be stressed that officers of noble origin never completely left the armed forces. Rather, those who remained were inserted in a more binding institutional environment. Moreover, the Restauration, which took place after the end of the Napoleonic era, did not seriously question the military norm of efficiency that was imposed during the Revolutionary wars.

  8. 8.

    In France , Hérodote (founded by Yves Lacoste in 1976) constitutes an important exception. This periodical initially suggested an alternative geopolitics which was highly critical of the imperial projects.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to address special thanks to Constance de Lannoy, Maéva Clément, and Eric Sangar for their kind assistance during the writing of this chapter.

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  1. Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

    Christophe Wasinski

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  1. Institute of International Politics, Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, Germany

    Maéva Clément

  2. FNRS / University of Namur, Namur, Belgium

    Eric Sangar

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Wasinski, C. (2018). The Formation of the ‘Western’ Strategic Gaze: A Case Study on Emotional Irrelevance in International Politics. In: Clément, M., Sangar, E. (eds) Researching Emotions in International Relations. Palgrave Studies in International Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65575-8_7

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