Is The Economist Infatuated with Attrition?
More than ever before, our politicians and the ever-complicit media are struggling to convince the public that their policies are the response to an existential threat. This began in earnest during the Cold War, but the trend seemed to dissipate towards the end of the twentieth century when the comforting idea of a natural harmony induced by a globalized economy emerged as the official ideology.
The idea we evoke with the words “our civilization” refers to the state of mind an entire population shares concerning the conditions required for its collective survival and continued prosperity. When any one of the fundamental conditions is threatened, we call the problem “existential.” Ideally, civilizations put in place a complex of structures designed to maintain a level of confidence and trust permitting its members to live their lives in peace and harmony.
Today’s civilization is increasingly defined by its technology. We have evolved into a civilization in which, as Marshall McLuhan famously revealed, “the medium is the message.” We can now count on the media to transmit all the important messages. One of those tasks is promoting existential threats.
Existential threats now come in two varieties. There are real ones and then there are politically or technologically fabricated ones. Climate change, nuclear war and financial collapse are among the real ones that have now become palpable. But there are others that delight the media, such as the fear that autocracy may replace democracy; that the Democratic party in the US will impose a Marxist dictatorship on freedom-loving Americans and confiscate everyone’s guns; or that Donald Trump will transform the US into a white nationalist, fascist nation. As citizens, we are constantly being encouraged to make decisions not on their own grounds but to avoid an “existential threat.”
The Economist recently produced a slick propaganda video designed for that purpose. It aims to convince doubting Westerners that Ukraine still has a chance to win a war most Western experts quietly believe is clearly lost. Despite the title, Winning the Long War in Ukraine, it is less about winning than pursuing a “long war” of attrition. At two points, to give legitimacy to the continued conflict, the journal’s Russia and Eastern Europe editor, Arkady Ostrovsky, states plainly: “This is an existential war.”
Today’s civilization is increasingly defined by its technology. We have evolved into a civilization in which, as Marshall McLuhan famously revealed, “the medium is the message.” We can now count on the media to transmit all the important messages. One of those tasks is promoting existential threats.
So what is the appropriate answer to an existential threat? US President George W Bush provided the solution when, two decades ago, he responded to his “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) by launching wars whose logic turned out to be simply to have no endgame. The current US President Joe Biden updated that logic by promising to make the current war in Ukraine last “as long as it takes.” Bush’s GWOT itself was a largely imaginary creation, but the endless wars it permitted quickly became a banal geopolitical reality.