By Alexander Perepechko

Published on December 30, 2015

From Organized Crime to Low Intensity Conflict? (continued)

Together with small families and mammismo, changes in governmental regulations pertaining to legitimate and other types of societal activities partially explain why Americans do not want to fight and die in wars. In spite of this unheroic realism, the Middle East slowly but surely exports low intensity conflict (LIC) to American state territory. Also, proper American organized crime might evolve into LIC by coalescing along religious, racial, political, and socio-economic lines and merge with foreign-born LIC…

Based on an analysis of temporal patterns of radical Islamic terror attacks in the United States, I suggested in my previous research essay that the hierarchically organized bureaucratic security and intelligence agencies created after September 11, 2001 might not be up to the task of fighting radical Islam. Indeed jihadists change strategy and tactics very often and operate efficiently. American security and intelligence agencies operate according to governmental regulations which frame their strategy. How good is this strategy?

Before we look at governmental regulations pertaining to illicit activities and activities regulated by classified legal procedures, we need to analyze one more interesting pattern – a geographic pattern of radical Islamic terror attacks in the United States.
Continue reading Securitization of post-heroic America. From organized crime to low intensity conflict and from the liberal state to the “post-modern” state? (part 2) →

By Alexander Perepechko

Published on October 20, 2015

Along with small families and refusal to tolerate combat casualties, antiwar protests demonstrate why Americans and Europeans do not want to fight and die in foreign wars. In this research essay I will investigate one of the forms of these protests – mammismo (can be translated a momism from Italian).

The term mammismo was coined in 1952 by the Italian intellectual Corrado Alvaro (1952). He was looking for reasons for Italy’s poor performance in the two world wars. According to Alvaro, poor mothering was the root cause of many of the shortcomings of Italian men and therefore of Italian society. He blamed Italian mothers for being unable to rise above animal instinct and for bringing up immature sons lacking civic responsibility and high moral qualities. Primitive Italian mothers emasculate, devour, and make dependent male children, he said. Alvaro (1952: 186) criticized Italian society for simultaneously exalting mothers and depriving them of sons sent “inexperienced and unprepared …to desperate and reckless wars.” Therefore, mammismo initially meant that in the case of war nobody loves sons as much as their mothers. Loss, nostalgia, and guilt are keys to mothers’ primary concern for sons. Italian historian Maria D’Amelio (2005) located the beginning of the exclusive mother-son bond in the period of Risorgimento (1750-1870) and traced its development through the two world wars.

Luttwak (2001: 52) modified and applied the concept of mammismo onto warfare in the postindustrial period. Since Italian and other western societies have very low birthrates, mothers in the West view the wounding or death of their only son or daughter in war as an outrageous scandal rather than an occupational hazard. Luttwak argues that today this attitude has enormous impact and powerfully constrains the use of the force in Europe, North America, and other postindustrial regions. How plausible is this generalization?
Continue reading Can mammismo stop America’s next foreign war? →