Tom Gregory used one particular phrase many times in his fascinating lecture- a phrase which never failed to derail me. “The business of war”. How peculiar. I knew he meant how we conduct war but I couldn’t stop imagining a little office block with whiteboards touting useless corporate slogans, and miserable office staff chugging bad coffee while people in suits shouted in board rooms. Once I started thinking about it, I honestly couldn’t stop. Well obviously the CEO would be the country waging war- they make all the decisions for the company and have the highest stakes in the result of the business venture. The ones with cheap, stained ties are the managers, so they’d be the high ranking military personnel. They make some really big decisions but they still need to check in with the higher ups about things because, in the end, they follow orders. And those desperate paper pushing interns would be the actual foot soldiers. The lifeblood of the business but so pathetically expendable to the CEO. I was rather enjoying my little thought experiment until I realised it was all wrong. Sure businesses compete with each other but they don’t go out and try to kill each other. If a singular nation translated to a business, then who were they waging war on? Was the company a viscously capitalist one, preying on and attacking it’s customer base? The analogy I had been carefully constructing in my head just made no rational sense… so I flipped it and made it almost completely irrational.
I don’t think it’s the business of war so much as war being the business itself. That’s the name on stamped on the business cards. It’s the thing that can stimulate the economy or can bring it to it’s knees. Now that we’ve established that war itself is a booming business which some customers just can’t get enough of, we need to lay out the board of directors- the ones who run this whole show. The chairman is, like a bad cliche, death itself. I know it’s pretty lame and fake-deep but it’s true. The ultimate driving force behind a war is death of some description- it could be literal as in the body count, or perhaps the death of a culture or way of life, etc. War strives for the type of the death that decimates the enemy, whatever that may entail.
You can’t have the chairman without the vice chairman, violence. It’s the means to an awful end. We’ve already unpacked how violence can be physical, verbal and even spiritual. This vice chairman is the brutal kind that will stop at nothing to keep the company successful and the big boss pleased.
Every good company has a treasurer and for War it is obviously greed. The idea that there is something to be gained from all this loss. Greed wants make the business big bucks, but lets be honest, they know War is where to be if they want to keep their pockets full.
If you check any list for positions on a board of directors you’ll know there is the secretary. This one is harder to pin down- like they keep getting fired and replaced. The secretary notes everything down, observes and records all ideas and possibilities. Feel free to disagree with me but I think the secretary of War is suspicion, maybe envy or possibly distrust. Why would you start a war if you were perfectly content with your neighbour as they were? If you don’t side-eye and nosy-neighbour the countries nearby, you’re never going to know if and/or when to strike.
I couldn’t possibly list all the other general board members; desperation, anger, fear, (self)righteousness, and so on. Any other driving reason for war sits and slams it’s fists on the table with the other directors.
A company is useless with just a board of directors- it needs people to actually do the work. The key worker bees for War are constructs like the military and the manufacturing of weapons. They keep the machine well oiled and ready for production at all times. As for the customers, they are the people going to war. The richer the person (or more appropriately, nation), the more shares they can buy, the greater the stakes they have in the outcome, and theoretically, the greater the war they can wage.
War is a big business, like Amazon, Apple or Google. It’s just as evil and exploitative, but like the collective global chumps we are, we just can’t stop buying into it no matter the cost.
Image sourced from: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/back-view-of-the-thoughtful-businessman-wearing-a-suit-standing-in-his-office-hands-gm1069160140-285990259
Grace this was incredibly interesting to read! I really enjoyed your analogy and I thought it was apt and appropriate, especially in this capitalist world. Considering that the most significant actors in society at the moment are likely multinationals, I think this is also something particularly relevant to think about.
You had some really memorable lines, I think that “I don’t think it’s the business of war so much as war being the business itself” really stuck with me. You’ve drawn out the violent sides of doing business that I hadn’t even considered before. One could argue we’re even channelling our violent side into business. What may also be important to think about is the sorts of values that commerce culture fosters within us.
You’ve peeled back the layer that suits create and revealed them for what business really is. It’s also really made me think about the sorts of values that commerce is, in turn, fostering within us. As it dominates much of societies nowadays, and these companies will be our employers, it’s vital to consider what this culture is really ingraining in us. I also wonder to what extent this permeates the rest of society, perhaps in the warlike, competitive nature of the cut-throat school system.
Thank you so much for this great post! This was deeply intriguing and eye-opening!
The corporate image really highlights the banality of evil, to borrow a phrase from Hannah Arendt. The people who will sign your life away and destroy your homeland may not be the four cavaliers of the apocalypse, but they’ll probably be equally cavalier, and yes, quite likely wearing suits.
As an aside, I should have learnt by now not to look at stock images too closely. (Sorry, why is the sleek minimalist laptop facing that specific direction? Because the chair would surely be way over by the glass of water, so does the CEO just work while standing? And why is the CEO looking out from what is presumably a penthouse suite, into the side of a taller building? That can’t be an enjoyable view for someone with a superiority complex.)
Hey Grace, I love how creative this post is, and the analogy is so convincing. The more and more I learn about war the more it really does seem like just “a big business”… consider the purpose of wars on indigenous peoples to seize resources and land for the gains of the colonising nation… and America’s wars designed to seize oil… capitalism sucks. I thought your comment that “the ultimate driving force behind a war is death of some description” was so powerful. It’s really thought-provoking to think of the impact of war as something that goes beyond human life to entire ways of life and cultures. It’s devastating. Thank you for this amazing read!
“The idea that there is something to be gained from all this loss”
I didn’t click on this to meet a quietly horrific capitalism/war post (although I, in retrospect, should have seen it coming from that excellent title), but, hey, they’re never an unwelcome thing to run into.
” it needs people to actually do the work. The key worker bees for War are constructs like the military”
This line (or half of two lines but anyway), it really hits me. (I have thoughts)
1) War needs people to do the work (of killing and dying)
2) War, like any good business, uses constructs to hide that it uses people for its own ends
3) ??? (or, more accurately, military industrial complex, territory control, and political capital)
4) Profit?