By Alexander Perepechko

Published on July 5, 2015

Compared to earlier stages of Modernity, Late Modernity in the West is less “heroic” and less patriotic. Americans and Europeans do not want to go to war and fight. Three crucial factors partly explain this unheroic realism: 1) small families and the breakdown in family structure, 2) refusal to tolerate combat casualties and mass antiwar protests (e.g., mammismo, “momism”), and 3) changes in governmental regulations pertaining to illicit and illegal activities. The first two factors were portrayed by Luttwak (2009: 109-114). Kurginyan (2007: 38-46) provided a general description of the third cause.

These three issues present serious obstacles for the securitization of the West. Securitization implies the shift of power from an open society and its elites to national security and military elites and closed social systems and organizations controlled by these national security and military elite. Since control in elitology is commonly thought of in term of success or failure (Gibbs 1989: 320), we can say that after September 11, 2001, the United States moves from a system of control governing in open society to a system of control dominating in closed social systems. As French sociologist Jean Baudrillard (2010: 97) put it: “Security is quietly taking hold as “white terror” [counter-terror – AP] draining the system of its Western values: freedom, democracy, human rights. This is the diabolical trap laid by the terrorists, forcing “democracies” to sabotage themselves “progressively.”

How do the three aforementioned factors impact the securitization of the United States and other western countries?
Continue reading Securitization of post-heroic America. In the low birth rate hole →