Impact - Orientalism fuels western exceptionalism’s cleansing of the periphery and makes nuclear war inevitable

In an effort to generate critical self- reflexivity on practices of Orientalism and Occidentalism there has been a proliferation of discourses on ‘strategic Orientalism’, ‘techno Orientalism’ and ‘military Orientalism’ as discussed below. Keith Krause and Andrew Latham (1998) argue that practices of ‘strategic orientalism’ constitute the ‘foundation of Western security culture’ (Krause & Latham, 1998, p. 41). They assert that strategic orientalism is premised on the ‘pervasive and axiomatic belief that the West (or occasionally the United States) as a civilization has a special role to play in global security affairs’’ (Krause & Latham, 1998, pp. 41, 37). This is based on ‘a reading of the politico-strategic objectives and purposes of Third World states that is informed more by Western fears and prejudices than by the realities of politics in these states’ (Krause & Latham, 1998, p. 38). The deep-rooted fear of the attacking Asian hordes and their ability to industrialize and develop sophisticated weapons reinforces twenty-first century concerns about the ‘Rising East’. This ‘phenomenon of imagining Asia and Asians in hypo-or hypertechnological terms in cultural productions and political discourse’ is understood as ‘techno-Orientalism’ (Roh et al., 2015, p. 2). Practices of techno-Orientalism driven by ‘imperial aspirations’ and ‘appetites of consumerist societies’ are ‘infused with the languages and codes of the technological and futuristic’ and in ‘digital spaces abound with reinscribed racial tropes and stereotypes; these are sites in which racialization is more likely reinforced than challenged’ (Roh et al., 2015, p. 14). Scholars developing the concept of techno-Orientalism observe its ‘growing prevalence in the Western cultural consciousness’ and suggest that the ‘US techno Orientalist imagination has its roots in the view of Asian body…as a form of expendable technology’ (Roh et al., 2015, pp. 7–11). Nevertheless they insist that the scope of techno-Orientalism is ‘expansive and bi-directional’ and ponder on the ‘danger that Asian and Asian American creators…might internalize techno Orientalist patterns and uncritically replicate the same dehumanizing model’ (Roh et al., 2015, pp. 3, 7). In investigating the intimacy of a relationship it might be possible to glean and ‘retrieve recessive images and practices’ that have been historically constituted through a network of social relations and processes (Naeem & David, 2004, p. 191). These might present creative opportunities to move beyond ‘policing boundaries of self as an exclusive and homogenous space’ and instead ‘appreciate and claim the self that exists as part of the other beyond those boundaries’ (Naeem & David, 2004, p. 204). Porter insists on ‘the interactive and power-political nature of war, which has a culture of its own that can change all parties to a conflict’ (2013, p. 55). Porter claims that, ‘paradoxically, war can drive cultures closer together’ (2013, p. 33). This is because, ‘war…is not simply a clash of Others, made possible by an ignorant horror of difference. The warrior looks out at the enemy and sees men who are, in crucial respects, recognizably like himself’ (Porter, 2013, p. 34). He also argues that an engagement with, ‘the foreign “Other” can be treated as a superior model to inform self-examination’ (2013, p. 108). But this hopeful promise of Military Orientalism has not stemmed the tide of populist discourses deploying the dynamic of difference between ‘The West and the Rest’ in the aftermath of the Cold War to wage and perpetuate a global War on Terror. On the contrary it is possible to argue that there is deliberate and contingent deployment of a ‘decivilizing rhetoric that blends irrational, aggressive, rigid, paranoid and exceptionalist discourses to demonize Other-ness’ and give ‘unwarranted authority and autonomy’ to ‘militarist and imperialist discourses of national security’ (Taylor, 2007, p. 670). There is ‘sustained use of decivilizing imagery’ that ‘represents the United States as a virtuous nation reluctantly but legitimately fulfilling its divine mandate to use civilized reason and superior force’ vis-a vis ‘nuclear capable and aspiring nations in Asia, Africa and the Middle East’ depicted in a ‘racist, sexist language that reproduces colonial ideology. As such it rejects the authority and legitimacy of these nations as potential possessors of nuclear weapons and solidifies continued dominance by the United States of the nuclear strategic environment’ (Taylor, 2007, p. 685). The strength of these populist discourses reinforcing a dynamic of difference and denial is exhibited with the contemporary ‘malpractice’ of the Trump administration to not respect the nuclear deal negotiated with Iran (Kimball, 2018). Nuclear weapons have long been regarded as ‘a new technological deity’ and ‘a divinely offered gift that endorsed American exceptionalism and imbued its creators with God-like power and the mission to restore order and justice in a fallen world.’ (Taylor, 2007, p. 677). Gabrielle Hecht (2012) defines nuclear exceptionalism as ‘insistence on an essential nuclear difference – manifested in political claims, technological systems, cultural forms, institutional infrastructures, and scientific knowledge’ and insists ‘nuclear exceptionalism could be made, unmade, and remade’ as ‘for all efforts at making nuclear things exceptional, there were opposing attempts to render them banal’ (Hecht, pp. 6– 8). It is important to bear this in mind as this pernicious dynamic of difference and exceptionalism becomes even more acute with current US President Donald Trump’s everyday populist declarations. He is on record for stating that the US will be at the ‘top of the pack’ ‘until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes’ (Holland, 2017). In his recent visit to Poland ‘to summon the courage and the will to defend our civilization’ Trump (2017) claims ‘there are dire threats to our security and our way of life’ and argues, ‘the fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.’ There is little doubt in his mind of the ‘triumph’ of the West (Holland, 2017). It is therefore helpful to pause in this tumultuous ‘history of the present’ and suggest that ‘every identity owes a debt to alterity’ (Naeem & David, 2004, p. 8). Thus it is interesting to observe how the existing literature on ‘dynamic of difference’ between Orientalism and Occidentalism has expanded its arsenal with a more complex conceptual apparatus of Strategic Orientalism, Techno Orientalism and Military Orientalism to helps us grasp the everyday practices of techno-racial dynamic of differences that cultivate and nurture techno-racial stereotypes. These stereotypes more often than not dictate modes of behavior that make the Other ‘a monster that must not only be defeated but also utterly destroyed…an enemy who no longer must be compelled to retreat into his borders only’ (Schmitt, 2007). It is this ‘dynamic of difference’ with its persistent desire to annihilate the Other, makes one wonder, whether it is not a complementary sub-text for an increasingly alarming and growing superstructure of a ‘dynamic of denial’ in weapons control? A dynamic of denial so petulant that it casts its shadow in celebrating the recent success of a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty (2017).